I am told that many of the people with whom our economists have had recent discussions about the outlook are reasonably positive. The resource sector, which of course is quite important in Western Australia, has a fair bit of investment planned.
In both the euro area and Germany, the inflation rate has now exceeded 8% since May; in other words, it is more than four times higher than the target of 2%. In August, the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices for the euro area stood at 9.1%, with inflationary pressures broadly based.