Westpac market update & pillar 3 report for December 2008 Investor and media briefingWednesday, 18 February 2009Andrew Bowden, head of investor relations: Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us, and welcome to the Westpac update conference call. Joining in on the call today is Gail Kelly, our CEO, Phil Coffey, our CFO, Phil Chronican who is our group executive for Westpac Institutional Bank and Rob Whitfield, our group executive, risk management.  Earlier this morning we lodged three documents with the ASX, a media release, a presentation pack and our December quarter Pillar 3 Report.  Hopefully you've had a chance to have a look over some of those documents, but if you haven't had a chance, it'd be good if you could have a copy of the presentation pack in front of you, it'll be one of the items that we use to guide the discussion this morning.  If you don't have a copy, that can be downloaded from our website from the ASX or our website, westpac.com.au/investor centre.  Without any further ado, let me hand over to Gail to open the update.Gail Kelly, managing director:  Thanks very much Andrew, and good morning everyone.  We certainly appreciate you taking the time to join this call, and we are certainly aware that you're in the midst of your reporting season and so Phil and I will keep our comments brief and make sure we allow time for questions.  As Andrew mentioned, Rob Whitfield and Phil Chronican are also available to take questions.As you know, it's not our normal approach to deliver quarterly updates, however in the light of the current uncertainties and the ongoing volatility, we think it's appropriate to provide an overview of our first quarter, and we're going to do this at a group level.  We're not going to check all the detail at a divisional level, there'll be a full opportunity for detail at the half, and of course we're still well aware for any forecasts.  In addition, as you would have seen, we've released our Pillar 3 document today, and this update gives us the opportunity to provide some further context around that document and to take any questions.Let me start by way of overall commentary on the environment.  What we've seen in the past few months is a continued deterioration around the globe and in Australia of the effects of the global financial crisis, work their way through into the real economy.  Since we last spoke to you, the Chinese economy is surprised with its slowdown and the US and the UK economies have got worse.  On the positive side, in response to our own faster than expected slowdown within Australia, we've seen a greater level of monetary policy even than has been forecast, in fact 400 basis points easing over the past six months, and the significant fiscal stimulus that's now underway.  Just how serious the economic downturn in Australia becomes, and by that I mean how deep it becomes and how protracted it is