Stephen Koukoulas

Yes, we want to see that strong.

So again, there's that pipeline of activity of new construction, which is there, which is essential.

And I think that's important.

We've just got this grey area emerging now.

Are the building companies saying that, look, we can absorb a few of these costs?

Maybe the skill and labour shortage is not quite as bad.

So yeah, we can get away with doing a little bit more in terms of adding to the stock of dwellings.

But there's a real risk brewing that just when we've got the building approvals, we're about to build more dwellings.

That thing that we all really want to see for affordability and these other issues.

We've run into a hurdle that we didn't really see coming.

And that's a really disappointing thing for housing construction.

I remain upbeat.

But if these cost pressures, labour shortages continue or get worse, then we could see that faltering in the second half of the year.

They're going to be a little bit crazy because, and the reason I say that is that they include petrol.

And what were people doing in March?

They were running around filling up their cars.

So in a funny way...

We could actually see, and I noticed that a couple of the banks have got their internal cash flow data showing that we could see a strong result for household spending.

Alas, it'll all be petrol.

So another one, like the inflation numbers, take out the petrol spending and you'll get probably a fairly moderate growth.