Simon Bridges has never been better since he wasn’t leader.

I've mentioned this before, not necessarily about Simon Bridges, but also Todd Muller, David Shearer, Andrew Little, and to an extent you could argue Judith Collins.

I suppose it's like sport. Many people over the years have talked about the burden of captaincy. Great players do not always, or necessarily, make a great leader. I always argued Sir John Key was a great leader because he didn’t need to be.

Being independent, whether financial or otherwise, gives you a massive psychological freedom. Of course, you want to do well, of course you are driven, but at the back of it all, at all times is the simple truth that life is bigger than this.

If it works, then brilliant. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too. It's not your sole existence, you don’t need it, and there is a light of foot magic about that ability or status.

Anyway, Bridges, like the others, tended to get bogged down with the pressure of leadership. That ended and he got over the upset, assuming he has, maybe the book will tell us otherwise.

But his assessment of the budget's housing predictions is the Bridges of old. It's UFO stuff, he says. If he'd maintained that level of one liner, who knows how different it all might have been?

The trouble with Budgets is people believe them. The worst parts of the budget are the forecasts. The spending is mainly real, the promises aren't always. Kiwibuild, anyone?

The forecasts are little more than stabs in the dark, but taken as gospel.

Do not forget part of this year's rhetoric was based around the fact they had more money than they thought, and they only had that, because all the previous forecasts were wrong. They say we'll get a surplus in seven years, do you honestly believe that?

But housing has the advantage of track records and knowledge. So, to suggest that the rises we have seen of late, for no particular reason other than tax adjustments and LVRs, we will suddenly go from 19 percent growth to less than one is fanciful.

The world is opening up. Therefore, sales for our exports should boom, Grant Robertson keeps reassuring us how well we are doing and against that background, housing stalls?

I've been in housing for a while. I like housing, I think I have a pretty good feel for the market, and I can state that I have never lost in housing. So, with those credentials I can say with some surety it's not dropping like a stone. Will it slow? Yes? Slow to next to nothing for the years the budget suggests? Not a chance.

If that budget guess is wrong, how much else is?

Bridges sees it, I see it. How is it those paid to don’t? And how worried should we then be?