Finally, the statistics show what you’ve all been feeling in 2023

Jim Chalmers says the “hard times” were expected and will pass. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Official economic statistics are ­finally catching up to the national scowl.

Australia’s growth engine is rapidly losing its vitality.

And without the power of population and the public purse, the collective mood would be worse.

Annual output growth of 2.1 per cent, you don’t say?

Jim Chalmers says it’s a superior performance to that of our peers: the G7’s Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada are all growing at a slower rate.

But that’s in aggregate, and we generally look in the mirror one face at a time.

When you take in the fact that the population has grown by an estimated 2.4 per cent in the year to September, or 654,000 people, then our growth doesn’t feel so flash.

With taxes rising to record levels, families dipping further into their savings and inflation more than twice the average of the past three decades, Australians have solid proof from the statistician that they’re going backwards.

As are, you will have noticed from every pet-shop pundit, the Albanese government’s mid-term polling numbers.

The story of 2023 is the big squeeze: on family finances and for housing in our cities.

Real net national disposable income per capita, a proxy for mat­erial living standards, has fallen by 3.4 per cent since June last year.

As the Treasurer said in his Measuring What Matters manifesto in July, this cumbersome metric “is more closely related to the average lived experience, and prosperity of Australians”.

Chalmers acknowledges the “hard times” but used his post-­accounts press conference to accentuate the positives lurking beneath the dire headline figures.

Returns to workers are up at a very solid clip of 8.4 per cent over the year, taking in award wage rises, bonuses and extra super.

Energy and childcare rebates are also easing the pressure on family budgets, but shifting the burden to taxpayers.

The bright side of the foreign student and visitor influx is a stonking 36 per cent rise in income from service exports.

The consumer demand they stoke, the jobs they fill, are also behind the surge in Canberra’s sales and income tax take.

The other players in keeping the economy ticking over are governments, through a fat pipeline of capital works, by helping with the cost of living and feeding the prime sources of future spending growth – disability services, healthcare and defence.

The public sector’s footprint endures at around pandemic crisis levels, fuelled by the states’ debt-driven big build of rail, roads and tunnels. The IMF warned the Albanese government that these projects, many ill-conceived and with few running to budget, needed to be reined in.

Fat chance, as premiers and chief ministers went to Canberra on Wednesday and, surprise, surprise, orchestrated another shakedown at national cabinet.

What you lose on the infrastructure roundabout, you gain on the GST swings. “No one worse off”, of course, just the dependable national credit card.

Just tap and go.

Analysis by Commonwealth Bank economists shows that since 2015, the national economy has expanded by 20 per cent.

But public running costs have increased by 50 per cent in those eight years, and public investment has jumped by 65 per cent.

Never get between a shovel-ready premier in high-vis and a bag of cement … but do check your wallet after the photo-op.