Bloody RBA goes commodity price raw prawn all over again

From the RBA’s Christopher Kent:

I am grateful for the opportunity to address you all this evening. It is fitting for my final speech in my capacity as the Bank’s chief economist to be in front of such a pre-eminent group of Australia’s business economists.

I want to talk about Australia’s economic transition following the end of the resources boom. My focus will be on developments affecting broader economic conditions, and the labour and housing markets more specifically. A key theme of my discussion is that aggregate, economy-wide variables – such as investment, unemployment or housing prices – often mask important differences across the states. Understanding those differences can give us a better appreciation of how the Australian economy is performing and is likely to evolve.