Thank you very much.
You said in your opening remarks that the regulatory intervention sought by the retail lobby would unfairly pass merchant business expense on to consumers. You also say there'd be few payment choices, a reduction in benefits for consumers, and possibly higher costs for consumers in their monthly statement or at the checkout counter, and you talk about the Australian example.
Certainly, statistics we have here show that the number of credit card accounts has continued to increase in Australia, the number of credit card interchanges has continued to increase, as has the value of credit card transactions. So I'm having a little bit of a problem with that.
You go on to say that there would be fewer rewards. I'm not sure what fewer rewards really mean to the average person who has the card and how important that is to them. You say there would be fewer benefits from their payment cards—and again, I'm not sure how tangible that is to the person—along with higher costs associated with surcharging at the checkout counter.
I'd like to have a little bit more meat on the bones as to why you're making all these assertions.