Across the economy, most borrowers in the middle years of the last decade probably expected that incomes would keep rising reasonably fast – not to find that average real incomes have not grown at all since 2005. Faster sustained growth remains very attractive, if only we were able to achieve it.
For New Zealand, it is difficult to envisage the sort of resource-switching that seems likely to be required occurring without a sustained fall in the (real) exchange rate. That, in turn, probably involves structural change in the real economy and some improvement in the international situation: it is certainly not something New Zealand monetary policy can bring about.