I had an enjoyable chat yesterday afternoon with Steve Austin on the 612 ABC Brisbane Drive program regarding the latest CommSec and Deloitte economic reports which had generated political debate during the day. While state Treasurer Jackie Trad highlighted that Deloitte was forecasting Queensland would lead the nation in economic growth, the Opposition was critical of Queensland’s sixth place in CommSec’s State of the States ranking. Steve asked me about the respective merits of both reports, and you can hear what I had to say at this link at around 2:02:30:

Steve Austin’s Drive program, Monday 29 January 2018

In the interview, I expanded on the comments I made regarding the reliability of economic forecasting in my post from yesterday:

Comments on Deloitte’s latest economic outlook for Qld

I also criticised the CommSec State of the States Report. To illustrate the point I made to Steve about the problem with the CommSec methodology, which ranks states according to how their current indicators deviate from decade averages, see the chart below of one of the indicators used: construction work done. In Queensland, in September quarter last year construction work done was nearly 18% below the average of the ten years to that quarter. This was unsurprising given the huge and unprecedented construction boom associated with the construction of the LNG plants at Curtis Island, and also because of the large amount of construction activity associated with state government responses to the water crisis and natural disasters, among other things. Queensland really shouldn’t be penalised for now falling below the decade average in a comparison across states, as occurs in the CommSec State of the States report.

Also see my previous comments on the State of the States Report from CommSec:

CommSec State of States report misleading on population growth

CommSec’s State of the States misleading on Qld’s economic performance

Ask a silly question, get a silly answer