Fireside Chat at Australian Payments Plus Beyond Tomorrow

Notes

1. areas of improvement and change. But I’m going to warm us up with: what you think Australia is
2. getting right in payments? Brad Jones Thanks, Lynn. I’m glad you started there, because there is a lot to be proud of, I think, in
3. this country in our work in payments. I say that from a couple of perspectives. One, of course, as a
4. central banker, we look at the data and when we look at the data what we see is a picture of costs
5. having come down significantly, certainly in the retail space for merchants in the last couple of
6. decades. We’ve seen the speed of payments go up in no small part because of the NPP. When we
7. look globally at how the uptake of fast retail payment transaction volumes are tracking in Australia
8. vis-a-vis the rest of the world, there’s a good story to tell there. There are one or two
9. countries that might have seen slightly faster uptake, but we are tracking ahead of most of the pack.
10. I think that’s a good story to tell. In addition to that, a particular area of passion for me, and consistent with our mandate
11. at the bank, we see parts of the payments ecosystem become real hotbeds of innovation. Given the national
12. productivity challenge we’re all wrestling with, our sense is that the payment system is one of
13. those sectors of the economy that’s making a really important contribution. So, all of those things
14. are really welcome. Now, that’s not to say that there are not some challenges and we’ll get
15. into that, I’m sure. Lynn Kraus We’re just going to stay on the good stuff. But, no, we definitely have seen that March change
16. and lowering the cost of payments. Obviously we have a budget coming out tonight. It’s really
17. interesting. I’ve spent a bit of time in Canberra over the last year and with small business,
18. and every line item counts, right, for a small business? What used to be just a line item that went
19. through, there’s a huge amount of focus on. So, I’m going to stick with that theme around
20. the cost of payments. Earlier this year, the RBA conducted the first stage of the Merchant Card
21. Payments Costs and Surcharging review. I understand you had over 100 submissions. Clearly, the
22. issues paper was very topical to have such a strong response, but I’m sure it also had a lot of
23. strong, diverse views that were expressed as well. Are you able to talk about some of the themes that
24. have come from your team’s analysis of those submissions? Brad Jones Yes. For those perhaps less familiar, the current surcharging framework was put in place more than
25. two decades ago. At that time, or basically since that time, we’ve seen a number of important, I
26. think, public policy outcomes achieved. We introduced basically a price signal. So, consumers began
27. to understand the implications of choosing different payment methods. And merchants had an ability to
28. recoup the costs of the choices that their customers were making, which is one of the reasons why
29. surcharging is a bit different to the costs incurred by businesses in other ways. The problem is that 20-odd years on the landscape is quite different to the landscape of
30. the early 2000s. What we observe now is that it’s much more difficult for consumers to avoid
31. surcharging costs. It’s also the case that we’ve seen a proliferation in single rate or blended
32. price plans, which has had the practical effect of debit card users subsidising credit card users, which
33. from a price signalling perspective is not ideal. What we’ve heard from merchants also is some
34. concern over the opacity of fee structures that are wrapped up into their plans. We felt like it was time
35. to do stocktake and ask ourselves is that regime still fit for purpose? Or do we need to make some adjustments? Those adjustments could
36. span a spectrum from very minor tweaks all the way up to including scrapping surcharging on both
37. debit and credit. So, they’re like the boundary cases, if you like, and then there’s a
38. spectrum of possibilities in between. The Payments System Board has had an initial discussion about the trade-offs around
39. different options, and we’ll be having a subsequent discussion at our next board meeting in June.
40. What I can say is there is a laser-like focus on making sure we fully understand all of the various
41. stakeholder concerns and preferences. You alluded to that in your question. This is an area where
42. it’s not unusual to have diametrically opposed perspectives. We see our role here as to step back,
43. think a bit beyond just a narrow interest and think about the public interest more broadly. We
44. haven’t yet landed on a policy proposal, but we are thinking very hard about, if we are to make an
45. adjustment on surcharging, just making an adjustment downstream -- making no adjustment upstream -- is
46. just going to redistribute cost in the system. What we are looking very hard at is how do we get
47. wholesale costs down? If we can get wholesale costs down, the need for merchants to surcharge diminishes
48. and we’re in a different sort of equilibrium. That’s just to give you a flavour of the sorts of
49. issues we’re wrestling with. Lynn Kraus The surcharging one has been really topical in the last number of months and it is quite complex, as
50. you mentioned. It sounds, though, like one of my questions -- and I feel like you’ve nailed it
51. -- is: do you believe there is a way to ban surcharging and still provide that protection to small
52. business who really carry the cost of payments? Do you believe that’s an achievable outcome? Brad Jones It is, but the starting point for our deliberation here is to think about surcharging in the context
53. of an ecosystem. You cannot pull one lever here and not expect it to have consequences that will
54. ripple right throughout that system. We’re really trying to think holistically and make sure
55. that the outcome we arrive at strikes the right balance between the competing priorities and
56. interests of the various stakeholders. Lynn Kraus Excellent. The one other thing that was highlighted in the paper that I just quickly wanted to ask
57. about was the need to make the various payment fees and charges more visible, as well as possibly
58. making them easier to compare if you are a merchant. That could really support merchants and users to
59. actually have more informed choices in the payment options and methods they accept. But I’m
60. assuming that is going to be as complex as surcharging in terms of getting alignment around appetite
61. for disclosure. Any thoughts on that? Brad Jones All I can say at this point is that we’re favourably disposed to looking at solutions that
62. reduce complexity, increase simplicity, increase transparency. They’re sort of the organising
63. principles, if you like. Lynn Kraus Great. I think it would be beneficial for all to have that greater transparency. I’m going to go
64. to the hot topic of the risk review on the move to the NPP. You’ve obviously spent a lot of time
65. reviewing the risks over the last number of months. I might start at the highest level. If you were
66. able to give us a report card with five years to run on the clock, how would you assess us at
67. the moment as an industry? Brad Jones Our risk assessment has revealed that there are some significant challenges that industry -- frankly
68. the country and all participants in this system -- need to lean into as a matter of priority. I would
69. say as a matter of urgency. At the same time, in the last few months we have detected a notable shift
70. in the way that the key stakeholders are engaging on this project. We take some comfort from this
71. pivot that is now starting to generate some momentum. We welcome that, we encourage it and we will do
72. what we can to facilitate and build on that momentum. But there are some quite material challenges
73. that our conversations with the entire ecosystem have revealed. The risk assessment was really
74. designed to surface those, make sure that everyone had visibility over the breadth and depth of the
75. challenges that are in front of us, give us a consistent, if you like, single source of truth
76. that we can each now lean into and start to address as a matter of priority. The five years will go
77. fast. This is a project of national significance. I can tell you at the outset that the way
78. that the Bank will be engaging in this project is we will be looking to ensure that the public interest,
79. the national interest, is enshrined from the outset in whatever functional features our
80. account-to-account payment system eventually generates. That will be the prism through which we’ll
81. look to engage here. What is in the national interest -- not the parochial interest of one stakeholder,
82. but the national interest writ large? Lynn Kraus Excellent. I think, speaking to many people over the last week -- we welcomed the report to
83. crystallise the work that needs to be done. I do think many people in this room have also welcomed it
84. for their organisation to make sure it’s getting the priority that it needs to within their
85. organisation. I didn’t get an A, B or a C there, so I’m just going to -- not looking for an
86. F. So, we’ll just pass that. Two things you called out were a defined vision for what the future
87. of A to A payments should be in this country. And you also spoke a little bit in the report about has
88. there been a real assessment of the business case to close BECS? Did the industry look at options to
89. keep it open? Can you talk about why those two things are really important, the vision and the
90. alternative to keeping BECS open? Brad Jones What the quite extensive amount of consultation between our supervisory team and industry revealed
91. was a few things. The highest level finding, I would say, though, is that a lot of the challenges
92. that the risk assessment has laid out start from one proposition. That proposition is that there has
93. not been sufficient governance or coordination mechanisms up until this point. And from that a whole
94. bunch of things have flowed. One has been that end users have told us that they don’t feel that
95. their interests and perspectives were adequately captured in the initial part of the transition
96. planning. That’s one point. Another was that there was a presumption that all payments would be
97. shoehorned onto one rail because some institutions had the view that they had to just recoup their
98. costs. Now, recouping costs is one quite reasonable desire. We understand that to build rails
99. you need the private sector. The private sector -- it’s not unreasonable for them to want to recoup
100. their costs. But that cannot be the only or the defining motivation for the system that we land on. There
101. has to be a broader range of considerations, including public interest tests. They weren’t fully
102. articulated. There was a sense that, ‘Well, we’ll just default to the system that we’ve
103. already made an investment in.’ And there was not a larger discussion, a more foundational
104. discussion about, ‘Let’s begin with a clean sheet of paper. What are the core features that
105. industry believe should define our future account-to-account payment system, not just in 2030 but for the
106. 10 or 20 years after that point?’ That conversation never happened. At least it never
107. happened in a way where a broad range of stakeholders felt like they were included. Because of that there
108. has been a sense of a lack of legitimacy, because there was no inclusive discussion about what those
109. central features were. And, then, okay, how do we build a plan backwards from that point? That was
110. reflected in maybe the third element, which was there was no cost-benefit analysis done on alternative
111. paths to get to that end state or where the consensus has been formed to agree on these key features. So,
112. there’s no weighing of alternatives. There was not enough consultation. That’s where we were
113. late last year. In our discussions and discussions with industry we have detected a notable shift now,
114. particularly on the governance and coordination piece. I highlighted that at the outset because as I
115. said, if we can get that right, a lot of things will flow. If we don’t get that piece right, we are
116. pushing a big rock up a steep hill. Lynn Kraus Yes. I know you’ve welcomed the setting up of the NPP steering committee with an independent
117. chair. That’s really important for us too, because we need to be held accountable that
118. we’re meeting our milestones as we go. It’s a big step forward from a governance point of
119. view to have the right people, including RBA, Treasury and AusPayNet working together clearly under
120. an ACCC authorisation, of course. You have spent some time -- back to pricing -- thinking about and
121. exploring the end user pricing of NPP transactions. I know it hasn’t been an easy review, but
122. have you taken anything away from that initial review of the pricing of NPP? Brad Jones A couple of things there. One is what we have been able to deduce is a difference in wholesale costs
123. for NPP transactions vis-a-vis BECS. It’s been harder to get good visibility into differences in
124. costs faced by end users. That’s an area that the bank wants to do more work in -- work with
125. industry to lift the visibility over end user costs. There’s a related issue here beyond just
126. cost, which is value. We would very much encourage industry to think in those terms. This is where I
127. was encouraged, Lynn, by your opening remarks when you referred to the importance of developing batch
128. solutions. One of the very clear pieces of feedback we heard from very important end users in BECs
129. was their desire to ensure that they can continue to receive value for money in whatever batch
130. settlement solution is made available to them. Their starting point is that, ‘We don’t need
131. all of the bells and whistles of the NPP. We value reliability, security and batch settlement a
132. handful of times a day offered at very low cost, which is actually a good trade-off for us and
133. we’re comfortable with that. So, why would we be shoehorned into a more expensive set of rails
134. that offers functionality that we derive no benefit from? Why would we want to engage in that?’
135. It’s like the old Foxtel subscription. You’ve got 3,000 channels; you’d never
136. watched any of them. Why do you want to pay for that? It’s not an unreasonable starting
137. position. So, as we start to move from just a cost-based framework to think about value for money and
138. making sure that end user needs are firmly embedded in the solution set that’s devised,
139. recognising that not all end users have the same needs will be, I think, a really important feature
140. in building legitimacy for this migration. Lynn Kraus We’ve heard that loud and clear in our conversations with members and with users. There is a
141. variety of views. Some want to embrace every bit of value that real-time payments and 2000-plus
142. characters can give them to really achieve something different. And there is a view that we just for
143. now need to make sure the payment will flow when it flows at the right time to the right person. But
144. I’m also hopeful once we’re across the line they’ll also be open to exploring the
145. value that the NPP will give them. But we’re trying to meet users where they’re at with
146. what their particular issues are. Just a last question before I move on, and there have been quite a
147. number of questions that have come through on Slido about value. So, it’s great that you’ve
148. hit on that. We do focus on the cost of payments, but it truly is about not only the cost; it’s
149. about the value that’s being delivered. With five years to run before the planned
150. decommissioning date, what role is the RBA going to play to monitor the risks from this point
151. forward? Brad Jones At a high level, we will be monitoring and reviewing that migration and reporting and our staff will
152. be reporting back to the Payments System Board on a regular basis. And where our supervisory team is
153. becoming concerned that, say, public interest considerations are being subordinated to purely to
154. commercial decisions, that would be the sort of context where you would expect issues to be elevated.
155. We’re at the start of, I think, a series of roundtable discussions, steer cos and so on, where
156. RBA staff will have roles as observers and will have a role in trying to ensure that some of those
157. public interest considerations like safety and reliability, value for money, end user choice, and so
158. on, are embedded into the solution set. There’s a couple of different ways that we’ll be
159. engaged. Lynn Kraus Wonderful. I’m just going to switch gears. I wanted to talk about cybersecurity. One of your
160. defined priorities is uplifting cyber resilience and clearly defined cyber strategies and, along with
161. that, rigorous cyber testing programs. I think in the current environment there is a real heightened
162. awareness and risk. I wanted to just cut straight to it, if I can. Can you share what it is
163. you’re worried about and, more importantly, what the industry and the people in this room need
164. to do to be prepared? Brad Jones You’re talking about cyber. There’s clearly a non-state and a state-based element to this.
165. I would say that our growing concern is the state-based dimension to cyber risk is very unlikely to
166. decline. We’re going to need to step up -- when I say ‘we’, the community of
167. regulators and industry, are all going to need to step up the intensity of how we address this
168. challenge. I would say for almost everyone in this room we have grown up in an era of the peace
169. dividend. That has meant we could focus on, say, speed over resilience. If you think about the global
170. trading system, what’s been the defining feature of the last three or four decades in the global
171. trading system? Speed over resilience. We’re now at an inflection point. The Payments System
172. Board had a really good discussion at the last board meeting about features of the new world order
173. that are with us now. The era of geostrategic competition is clearly going to be one of those and
174. will really define the context for everything that we’re doing. With that in mind, the types of
175. practical things that we think industry can do for financial market infrastructures is ensuring that
176. they are regularly testing their cyber controls against industry standards. We also offer the CORIE
177. program, which enables key FMIs and payment systems to subject themselves to very robust resilience
178. tests. So, that’s key. We’re also engaging with a number of institutions as part of a new
179. program on geopolitical risk which is designed to build offline payments capacity. If one of our
180. platforms is subject to a massive cyber attack, do we have a fallback operational capability to
181. ensure that payments, critical payments, can still be made? Perhaps not on a real-time basis, but
182. they can still go through? There’s a broad suite of things that we’re doing as regulators
183. and that we’re also urging and encouraging industry to take on. Lynn Kraus Yes, and I know that the industry is having lots of conversations around contingency and backup
184. plans. I think that work is definitely progressing. One, I just thought I might, if you’re
185. comfortable, pop over here in the slido, which is really interesting is that if we think about the
186. role of global tech at the moment, clearly they are influencing, and have seen a lot of influence
187. over the last decade, on how we pay and how everyday people choose to make a payment. There’s a
188. question here: do you have a view about whether that global tech influence is in any way eroding
189. domestic confidence in new value propositions such as the NPP? So, how do you think? Competition is
190. good. I know the RBA loves competition, but there is an influence beyond what we do here
191. domestically, right? Brad Jones You’re right; we are predisposed towards competition. In fact, it’s in our mandate. We also
192. value sunlight. So, if entities are engaging in our payment system in an opaque way and preventing
193. sunlight from radiating out, including on their cost structure, that will be problematic for us. Now, we’re at a quite interesting juncture where we were hopeful a really important
194. piece of legislation would go through in this sitting of parliament. It looks like that’s not going
195. to happen now. All I can say for the record is the bank is very strongly, and the Payments System Board,
196. supportive of the payment system reforms that were proposed. Once the election has passed our support
197. will be just as firm as it is today that those reforms go through, because we are operating under a
198. regulatory regime that was set up for a different world. It’s no longer fit for purpose, and we
199. really need to expand the perimeter of the sorts of entities that we can regulate so that we can meet
200. some of the challenges that I think were implied in that question. Lynn Kraus Yes, great. I’m going to cast our minds a bit forward beyond the current payment rails and
201. reflect on what’s coming down the track. Treasury just really recently, even maybe in the last
202. week, announced a statement about developing an innovative Australian digital asset industry.
203. It’s important because that shows that there is momentum around getting some clarity around
204. digital assets in Australia. Very much like to hear your thoughts on the potential benefits of a
205. wholesale central bank digital currency, and also just to hear your aspirations for Project Acacia,
206. which is, I think, currently under assessment for all of those who’ve submitted, including us. Brad Jones I can maybe link our interest in wholesale CBDC back to your first question, Lynn, which was: tell us
207. all of the good things about retail payments? Just at a really high level, part of the reason why in
208. Australia we haven’t seen the public policy case really emerge for a retail CBDC is because we
209. already have a fast payment system that’s working well. The usage is going up. We hope costs
210. continue to come down. There’s nothing obviously broken in our retail payment system that would
211. motivate us to, certainly within the next few years at least, really seriously consider that. Now,
212. that framing is not the case for a number of other countries. For a number of other countries they
213. are pushing towards issuing a retail CBDC because there’s some big issue in their retail payment
214. system that they think a CBDC could address. That’s not where we’re at. On the wholesale side, we haven’t seen quite the same level of innovation that we
215. have on the retail side. We don’t have quite the same level of transparency. We can see there being
216. potentially a stronger public policy benefit from uplifting the performance of wholesale clearing and
217. settlement. And it would arguably be less disruptive than, say, introducing a retail CBDC, because we
218. already issue central bank money to a select number of wholesale institutions. So, it would be more
219. evolutionary than revolutionary. We see bigger potential benefits, fewer potential disruptions from
220. moving into the wholesale CBDC space. One area of particular interest for Project Acacia, which for those
221. that are less familiar is our new project, is we’re interested in looking at the role that
222. tokenisation/tokenised assets could play in helping to uplift the performance of our wholesale markets.
223. There could be a role for wholesale CBDC to facilitate those new markets, if wholesale CBDC was the
224. settlement asset that basically allowed those transactions to be settled. There are also alternative worlds where private digital money acted as a settlement
225. asset. One example would be stablecoins, which are very much in scope for Project Acacia, and also
226. tokenised bank deposits, which is an area where I think generally there has been less progress relative
227. to stablecoins. But we are going to have a really good look at the role that tokenised bank deposits
228. could also play in this future system. Lynn Kraus Excellent. We’ve got a plus talk this afternoon from the DFCRC, which will include a lot of that
229. conversation, so that’s great. I’m going to go to a few questions that are on the Slido,
230. and you are welcome if there are any there that really jump out at you. I felt like there’s one
231. that’s probably for me. I might start with that. In consultation around end users preferring to
232. stay with batch, how well do you believe the downstream cost of managing the unhappy paths in batch
233. is understood? Now, clearly I think that was meant for Brad, but I think the onus is on AP-plus to
234. really understand the implications of unhappy paths in batch. We have been doing a lot of work.
235. Particularly right now that work has focused largely with government and government agencies spending
236. time in Canberra to truly understand the outcomes around batch payments. We are listening and we are
237. learning, and obviously I think now that we have applied for the ACCC authorisation to be able to
238. work closer with AusPayNet -- I think having the two organisations working together will help us
239. understand that. We still have work to do right across corporate Australia to understand the end user
240. impacts. But if you want to add anything to that? I think there’s clearly a lot to learn in
241. terms of the impacts around batch. Brad Jones I think you’ve summed it up well, Lynn. Understanding what are the features of batch settlement
242. that end users most value today. There may be some ways to introduce features that they would equally
243. value in the future. I think that’s absolutely worth exploring. But without the value-for-money
244. proposition holding, I think we’re really going to struggle. Industry is really going to
245. struggle to get those end users brought in. Back to that Foxtel analogy that I drew, paying for TV
246. stations you don’t use does not represent value for money. Lynn Kraus This first one, radical idea -- I’m going to go there even though I won’t have a job! Has
247. the RBA considered making the NPP rails a public service where payments are free in the same way that
248. UPI and Pix have done? Brad Jones No. Lynn Kraus Phew! Okay. Brad Jones Just stepping back a bit from first principles, the central bank has a really important role to play
249. in the financial system and in payments in a couple of ways. Providing confidence in the finality of
250. settlement. Trust in the value of money. And providing a level playing field for competition. Beyond
251. that, we look to the private sector to take up the challenge of competing and offering the best
252. possible services at the lowest possible price for consumers. That’s something the private
253. sector is perfectly equipped to do. You can do that better than the public sector. You don’t
254. want the public sector in that space. So, no. Lynn Kraus We’ve got quite a number of PSPs with us today and there is a question here about the BECS risk
255. review. The question is: what triggered the inclusion of the statement about ensuring a PSP does not
256. create a proprietary solution to problems in the BECS transitions risk paper? Brad Jones I think what that statement was getting at was this issue around interoperability. We want
257. interoperability as a guiding principle to be reflected in whatever our future solution set looks
258. like. Similarly, we don’t want walled gardens to pop up all over our payment system. We
259. don’t think that will be particularly helpful. That’s basically the subtext. Lynn Kraus Yes. So, not locking in, and allowing people to move freely? SMEs pay a lot more for payments than big business. Is the RBA concerned about this,
260. particularly if surcharging is banned and blended rates stay? Clearly, volume discounts seem to be alive
261. and well for larger organisations. What’s your concern level on that difference between small
262. business and large business? Brad Jones Significant and ongoing. Lynn Kraus Wonderful. Just two more questions here. The risk assessment points prioritising low end user prices
263. -- would the RBA consider taking a similar approach to merchant costs by looking at the full
264. ecosystem? I think you’ve started that with some of the NPP pricing work already. Brad Jones Yes, we are thinking very hard about full ecosystem costs. One of the areas in particular on merchant
265. costs that has been surfaced by some of our discussions is the lack of transparency also around
266. scheme fees. That’s a particular area where we want to learn more and where we’re inclined
267. to want to have more sunlight on those fees. Lynn Kraus Yes, very similar to the merchant -- transparency, visibility, simplicity. We’ve had a question
268. about crypto. What do you observe in recent changes with how other countries are regulating crypto
269. and the implications of that for Australia’s thinking? Brad Jones A quite landmark paper dropped out of Treasury late last week, which I think was designed to give
270. industry a sense of the direction of travel. Certainly the feedback that we’ve heard for some
271. time, and that our colleagues at Treasury have heard, is they need a bit more guidance; industry
272. needs a bit more guidance. Industry has been certainly communicating to us and to ASIC and Treasury.
273. There’s a lot of activity now going on globally. If we don’t move, if legislation is not
274. updated, if regulation is not updated, we risk a brain drain. People very astute in the digital asset
275. space. They will just go to Singapore, Dubai or the UK. I think that message has got some traction,
276. and now you are seeing momentum building again. We would welcome that. We think this is a really
277. important space for the country. At the Reserve Bank, we’ve got some ability to move the needle,
278. and that’s what Project Acacia is trying to achieve. Within our constraints, we’re prepared
279. to push into use cases, different types of ledgers, different types of wholesale infrastructure that
280. haven’t really been explored -- certainly not explored in Australia and even relative to some
281. other countries. We want to do our bit. I know our colleagues at Treasury want to do their bit. One
282. of the areas that our colleagues at Treasury are also committed to doing, which I think is really
283. important, including for some folks in this room, is facilitating the review of the enhanced
284. regulatory sandbox. There’s some, I think, really good prototypes internationally, including in
285. the UK, where we could learn a lot about adjustments we could make there that would help facilitate
286. more early stage innovation and smooth the pathway from ideation to commercialisation. I know our
287. colleagues at Treasury are very attuned to that and want to play a constructive role. I want to
288. assure industry that, from a regulator’s perspective, we are watching what’s going on
289. internationally very closely and we are committed to doing what we can to provide that extra clarity
290. that we know is essential for business planning purposes. Lynn Kraus Excellent. I’ve got one more question here and one more question for me, but I just have to call
291. out the first question. Why is it that people from the RBA look so fit, healthy and relaxed?
292. Honestly, just take that compliment and don’t even … Brad Jones I’m not going there! Lynn Kraus I do want to just ask you a wrap-up question. If we go back to the theme today of unleashing
293. opportunities, looking ahead five years, what opportunities do you want to see unleashed for the
294. Australian payments landscape by the people in this room? Brad Jones Most regulators of the last 30 or 40 years would equate more innovation with less
295. resilience; that there was a trade-off. The dream I have -- and I talk to my team about this -- is
296. that we can break that nexus, that we can move into an era where the Australian payment system
297. becomes this hotbed of innovation in a way that actually reinforces resilience. Given the sort of
298. world that we’re moving into, it’s going to be a more dangerous, less stable world. We need
299. innovation -- actually reinforcing resilience in the system, not undermining it. So, why don’t I
300. end on that note? Lynn Kraus Fantastic. I am so pleased. We have had 13 pages of questions. So, clearly, Brad, people really
301. wanted to hear from you. I’m sorry that we didn’t have you for a whole morning, because
302. there was a lot of appetite to ask you questions. So, we’ll ask you back next year. Please join
303. me in thanking Dr Brad Jones.