Steve Waters

It was.

It was something that I've been looking forward to for 12 months, believe it or not, because the last couple of years just seemed like one long day.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Other than the economic pain, health, those obvious things, and then the ramifications of credit policy, first-time owners grants and all the government stimulus, some of those not so obvious changes are around the trends that are either going to be sustainable or not.

And that might be the

the movement of populace away from areas to different areas as they wrestle with the employment slash affordability and lifestyle components that COVID has made fully aware to them that probably wasn't beforehand.

So I think those trends that we're starting to see now, which is moving populations away from certain centres,

are really going to hold their own over the next, let's call it two to five years.

But conversely, I also think there's been some short-term trends because of COVID that have had their time in the sun.

And I would suggest that over the next few years may revert back to an element of normality.

So it's certainly going to be interesting over the next couple of years.

Yeah, I think it's been amazing.

But there's somewhat of an element, when you look back in hindsight, it was quite an obvious change that could have happened given the right circumstances, which ended up being COVID.

You look at an area like Queensland or Brisbane in particular, which has always got the highest intrastate migration numbers.

But then you throw a COVID scenario in there and you've got populations, say, from Melbourne and its surrounds, which have declined because everybody's gone to Queensland.

Same with New South Wales or Sydney to the regional areas, even to Tasmania.

None of that was made possible before.

in terms of longevity, unless employers and big business got their head around the fact that people can be just as productive working from home or in a blended scenario, whatever it looks like to them.

And I can personally say that prior to COVID, I don't know if I'd have been too happy about everybody working from home.