Graph 4  As has been the case globally, we had our own country-specific factors that have temporarily weighed on economic growth, including the drought and some disruptions to resource production and exports. More fundamentally, though, the main reason for the shift in momentum in the Australian economy is a slowdown in household consumption growth.
Over the second half of 2018, household consumption increased by just ¾ per cent, which is an unusually soft outcome. https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2019/sp-gov-2019-05-21.html  5/16  5/21/2019  The Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy | Speeches | RBA  The decline in housing prices is a factor here, but the more important factor is the long period of weak growth in household income (Graph 5).