Yeah.

NAB or any company has no God-given right to exist.

Any company has to meet the needs of its customers well or they'll go elsewhere.

Uh, and AI is going to change how banking is delivered significantly.

At the last trip, I met with a AI native company that was in the technology development space, and we're considering using their tooling.

And they shared a, a story that in the last six months they've added 10% to their workforce.

10%.

Hmm.

Happy with it? And what parts of the business might you just have to focus a little bit more on?

Uh, look, from an underlying level, I think there's a lot to like in the result.

Uh, uh, we, you know, all of our businesses are performing well and growing in excess of market, which is pleasing.

Our business and private bank did particularly well, uh, growing loans, uh, over 11% year on year, which is the fastest rate for us in over three years.

Uh, and we've done that holding margins constant, as you alluded to.

Um, we had good results across the rest of our businesses.

Particularly pleasing, as you highlight, is the, uh, performance of our proprietary home banking business, which, uh, crossed a important threshold in the month of March, where, uh, we originated 50% of our home loans through our own staff, which is great.

Do you think the government, which it brings down a budget in a week's time, the federal government, do you think it's spending too much? Do you think it needs to redirect where it's spending or its tax policy? Do you have any firm view on that?

So how do you grow a bank faster when the economy is basically growing at just about half of its long-term average?

Yeah, well, we actually think we're seeing a little bit of an acceleration, Ross.

We expect growth this year to be 2% and next year 2.3%, which, as you say, is about the trend levels of growth that the country can safely generate without triggering unnecessary excess inflation.

And, you know, within that, we're seeing credit growth increasing pretty materially.

We expect business lending to increase 7.5% next year at the system level.

If I turn to housing, something more like 6%.

These are good numbers.

To protect your lead in that area, do you also need to sacrifice some margin to get the business across the line?

What do you think, National Australia Bank, the biggest lender to business and particularly small businesses, how are small businesses travelling at the moment? Let's make it SMEs, small and medium-sized businesses.

I think they're doing well.

In our latest survey, both business confidence and business conditions improved, and they're at the highest level in about three years.

So again, I think that's promising.

You're seeing cash flow pressures both at the household level as well as in small and medium businesses ease, and things are getting better.

It's not...

In all cases, if I look at our mortgage customers, 80% of our customers chose to keep their repayments at the same level despite the three rate cuts.

How do you compete with such a strong competitor?

But we are going to lose jobs as well, aren't we?

This is going to be as profound an impact on how we live our lives and how we work as people.

the industrial rev revolutions that have preceded this.

So, you know, you go back to steam and the impact of the steam engine, you go back to the motor car, electrification, mobility, the internet, AI is going to be as consequential to how we live and work as those were to, uh, societies, uh, in days gone by.

Uh, that's a fact.

Um, uh, It's going to take away the mundane in terms of how we use and leverage mathematical models and robots in terms of how we do work.

And that's going to be very consequential.

Does it worry you that we are getting too much into debt in Australia and around the world? Well, I think there's two components to