One day last week as I was preparing these remarks, newspapers carried stories that personal insolvencies are the lowest for more than a decade. On the same day we could read that income inequality in Australia, as measured in the most detailed survey available, has not, in fact, increased, contrary to the impression so often given.
As I mentioned at the outset, the year-on-year rate of increase in the CPI (excluding fresh food) – which was minus 0.4 percent in April last year when QQE was introduced – subsequently turned positive and increased further to around 1¼ percent recently (Chart 6). These developments reflect an improvement in the output gap and a rise in inflation expectations.