Over the past decade, monetary policy, helped by other policies, has been relatively successful in this endeavour in that the current expansion has been longer than its predecessors in the 1970s and the 1980s. And when I last spoke publicly on this subject towards the end of last year, I expected this state of affairs to continue.
Like virtually everyone else who follows economic developments in Australia, I was surprised and disappointed to learn what the national accounts had to say about our growth performance in the second half of 2000.