The epic failure of Australia’s economic growth strategy

With the release of the latest national accounts data, it was revealed that Australia’s GDP in per capita terms is once again contracting. Meanwhile, in headline GDP terms, the economy grew by 0.2%, surprising to the downside of the analyst consensus of growth of 0.4%.

Australian GDP per capita has now contracted in 9 of the last 11 quarters, its most concentrated series of falls since records began in 1973.

But this is masking an even more severe deterioration in the output of the economy. In decades past, a far greater proportion of net population growth was driven by the natural increase, aka births minus deaths.