The Productivity Commission warns that our modern prosperity is due to the luck of our sky-high export prices. Virtually none of the acceleration in real national income growth int he 2000s has come from productivity growth which has slumped to the weakest on record.
The Reserve Bank is set to lift interest rates further next year to prevent the mining boom blowing up the economy.
[I am not convinced the mining boom is good for our resilience. It means digging up Australian minerals at a furious rate spending huge amounts on infrastructure to export them overseas selling a large proportion of the mining companies to overseas ownership suffering severe damage to some critically important aspects of our Australian environment such as the Darling Downs food bowl importing a large skilled overseas workforce for the mining jobs. What effect is this having on house prices and the security and stability of ordinary Australian lives and our children’s futures?]