Today’s Australian Bureau of Statistics – Australian National Accounts – for the September-quarter 2013, shows that real GDP growth was 0.6 per cent, down from the (revised) 0.7 per cent for the June-quarter. The annualised growth rate of 2.3 per cent is now well below the trend rate between 2000 and 2008 of 3.3 per cent. This poor growth relative to trend is the reason the unemployment rate is rising. The stunning result is that the public sector contributed 1.5 percentage points to growth this quarter (a reversal from the June-quarter). This contribution, while welcome, will not be sustained given the current political environment. Overall, the data paints a fairly gloomy overall picture for the Australian economy. It ia hard to discern what the new Federal government is up to given that in 2 months we have already had four discrete statements about education policy, for example! But if their overall macroeconomic rhetoric is maintained and they start hacking into public spending to flex their conservative muscles then the outlook will shift very quickly from gloomy to disastrous and we will follow Europe down the sink hole.