It is difficult to overstate the economic disaster that the National Accounts data is progressively revealing. The headline figures show income per capita levels that have been diminishing for each of the past seven quarters.

Tragically the Treasurer appears to be unaware of the cause of this – and that is also likely to be the case with his departmental advisers, who have been nurtured on Keynesian economics where every dollar spent by the government is counted as an additional dollar of domestic income.