Does it make that all a little bit irrelevant then?

Well, I think we can look at individual states and see how they're performing and look at the blockages and try and identify any differences there and look at policies that could perhaps unblock housing supply.

So Victoria's had a very, very strong multi-residential sector, so apartments, townhouses and so forth.

And it really did build an awful lot in the second half of 2020. of the last decade, and that's kind of still flowing through.

So I think Victoria is kind of the leading state when it comes to apartment development, and it's been pretty steady when building detached houses.

But there are headwinds in Victoria, as I said, falling prices, increasing construction costs, developers talking about all the new taxes that have been introduced in Victoria, increasing costs and making things less viable.

So I think Victoria is facing some significant headwinds to continue its really strong performance over the last 10 years or so.

From your perspective, Stephen, what do you think is going to be the key issue here?

How did it work?

work?No, it certainly wasn't without its critics.

What happened is investors in, in new dwellings or purchasers of new dwellings could get an incentive, a tax incentive, which started at around $10,000, and in return they had to provide, uh, a rental dwelling at 80% below the local median rent.

Um, so that incentive was, was actually quite generous 'cause if you're, you know, renting something for $500 a week and you have a 20% discount, that $10,000 is, is almost double the amount you're giving up.

But what it did do is provide a, a really strong supply of affordable housing to a group that's often ignored, so earn too much to be eligible for social housing, but really can't afford anything good in the private rental market.

So i- in that sense, it did provide or did plug a really important gap in the housing market.

But yes, many would argue that that incentive was, uh, a little bit, uh, too generous and, and a lot of people benefited from that and, and ended up producing the, you know, really quite small dwellings, quite sort of cheap dwellings.

Has it been an improvement at the scale that's required?

you.

Well, the book itself stems from I don't even want to say an argument.

I'll say a heated discussion that I have with my husband, the writer Byron Lane.

And maybe it's the same for you and yours and everyone listening and their partners and spouses.

And that is, if a UFO... showed up over your backyard and the beam of light shone down.

And you don't have time to think, you don't have time to pack, you don't have time to say goodbye.

It's just gut instinct.

So how do you contend with that within these characters?