With Reference to Economic Indicators Describe the Economic Conditions Prevailing in the Australian Economy over the Past Five Years

With reference to economic indicators describe the economic conditions prevailing in the Australian economy over the past five years.

Over the past five years the Australian economy has gone through many changes experiencing both the peaks and troughs associated with business cycle.

Five years ago, in the middle of 1997 Australia's economic growth had begun to upturn after a period of recession during the '96 year. This was unmistakably shown through the composite indicators of retail trade, dwelling investment and Australian share market valuations, all concurring with one another and demonstrating the effects of an upturn in economic growth.

This economic growth continued to increase through '98 and '99, partly being attributed to the weakening Australian dollar that allowed for the opening up and increasing market shares held by Australian exports on world markets. This was the case, as the reduction in the Australian dollar's value, triggered decreases in the prices of our exports for foreign buyers, thereby increasing demand for our products and increasing the amount of money and investments coming into Australia. This therefore resulting in the aforementioned increases economic growth when combined with the high levels of employment and consumer confidence.

This economic growth didn't however continue for long, with the economy peaking just before the start of the year 2000 followed by a sharp downturn that resulted in a temporary recession occurring around the middle of the year. This erratic behavior, most pronounced in retail trade, can be explained by the effects of both the millennium bug and the introduction of a general consumption tax in the form of the GST. The millennium bug caused much panic and with it bought panic spending especially in the IT sector thereby over inflating an already close to booming economy and after the non-event that the millennium (or Y2K) bug caused spending slumped and then further slumped due to the holding back of consumer spending on big ticket items such as cars and houses until the introduction of the GST.

In spite of the aforementioned pre GST economic slump, in the second half of 2000, with the implementation of the GST and the advent of the Olympics, the economy quickly boomed again before experiencing another sharp downturn followed by an equally sharp upturn. The initial upturn was due to increased post GST spending followed by huge