The latest gross domestic product (GDP) figures show just how dependent Australia is on exports, and that when they fall away, so too do any hopes of strong (or even average) economic growth.

Three months ago, when the March GDP figures showed surprisingly strong growth, Joe Hockey suggested that those who believed there were “dark clouds on the horizon” were “clowns”.

Well send in the clowns, because Wednesday’s GDP figures showed that Australia’s economy grew by a truly laughable 0.2% in the June quarter (seasonally adjusted) and just 2.0% in the past 12 months. The trend figures showed a slightly better 0.5% quarterly growth but a still very much below-average 2.2% annual growth.

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That marks 11 consecutive quarters where annual growth has been less than 3%, and that in the seven years since the global financial crisis hit, only five quarters have seen Australia’s economy growing above average:

Weak growth any way you cut it

The GDP figures come out every quarter and thus when we look at annual figures, the standard process is to compare the amount of GDP in (for example) the June quarter with that in the June quarter the year before.

On this measure there is no good news to be found at all. GDP is well below the average growth of 3.1% regardless of whether you use seasonally adjusted or trend figures.

GDP per capita is also woeful – it grew by just 1.0% in the past 12 months and hasn’t been near the 25-year average of 1.7% growth since 2012:

But because the figures marked the end of the 2014-15 financial year, the ABS also provides annual growth figures. These compare the total amount of GDP in 2014-15 with that of 2013-14.

On this measure, GDP growth came in at 2.4%, and not surprisingly, this was the number Joe Hockey focused on.

But this figure doesn’t hold much joy either. At 2.4% it is lower than the 2.5% growth achieved in both 2012-13 and 2013-14:

These annual figures also show that Australia’s nominal GDP – the amount of output in the economy in current dollar terms – grew by just 1.8%. That was the lowest such result since 1961-62, figures so dismal they predate decimal currency.

What happened to our exports?

No one was too surprised about the poor GDP figures, because the latest balance of payments figures released on Tuesday showed that Australia’s current account balance (the difference between what we export and what we import) fell by 41% in the June quarter – from a deficit of $13bn to $19bn.

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And the GDP figures showed just how bad the export picture was.

In the June quarter, exports fell by 3.3% in seasonally adjusted terms – the worst quarterly fall since March 2011:

The quarterly figures can bounce around a bit, but even the annual picture shows a sharp fall from the peaks seen in the past six to 12 months:

What this meant is that in the June quarter, net exports (exports minus imports) actually reduced GDP growth by around 0.6 percentage points (seasonally adjusted).

When we look at the annual picture, net exports are still contributing to growth, but the value of that contribution has sharply fallen:

The big reason is the fall in prices for our exports. The ABS calculates that the average price of Australia’s exports fell 8.2% over the past year. That is bad enough, but it also estimates the price of our imports rose 2.7%:

When export prices fall that much, you need to really ramp up the quantity that you export to break even, and in the past quarter we were unable to. And with that went any hope of a solid growth in our economy.

So if not exports, what?

Where did our growth come from – all 0.2% of it? Well, as Stephen Koukoulas rather mischievously noted on Twitter, the “statistical discrepancy” in the data actually accounted for 0.2% points towards GDP growth, meaning in theory it was responsible for all of the growth.

But if we put that aside, the big driver was government consumption and government fixed capital formation:

On the surface this would seem to be the government finally getting its infrastructure spending going, but the big driver was defence spending.

There was a 41% increase in national government fixed capital expenditure on defence in the quarter. Speculation is that this is due to the launch of the HMAS Hobart, but whatever is the reason, it certainly is not spending that will improve the productive capacity of our economy, and thus will be a very short-lived bonus.

Given that defence spending contributed 0.34% points to GDP growth in the June quarter, without it the economy would have gone backwards.

Oh mining boom, come back, we need you.

Remember when the mining industry powered our economy? Yeah good times. Alas, gone for now.

In the June quarter, production in the mining industry actually detracted from GDP growth. When looking over the past 12 months, the industry remained the fourth biggest contributor to GDP growth, but it now lags well behind the contribution from the financial and insurance service industry:

Housing keeps booming

Of course we knew the mining boom was over, and we hoped the transition from that would be softened by improvements in other construction areas – especially housing.

Well the figures shows that investment in private dwellings continues to grow solidly:

The problem – as it always has been – is that it doesn’t grow strongly enough to make up for the collapse in investment in the mining industry.

Dwelling investment in the past year added 0.5% points to annual GDP growth, but the fall in non-dwelling construction reduced GDP growth by 1.1% points:

This means that private investment continues to fall, and while there was a slight bump in public investment due to that defence spending, growth in both remains negative:

And what that all adds up to is incredibly weak demand:

The defence spending helped bump demand up a very little, but with overall demand growing by just 1.2% in the past year, there is pretty much no heat in the domestic economy.

Household spending is keeping us going

In the June quarter, household consumption grew by 0.5% – down from the 0.65% growth in the March quarter, but enough to keep annual household consumption steady at 2.5%. And that spending was a solid contributor to GDP growth:

It’s here that we see why the financial and insurance industry is the biggest contributor overall to GDP growth. The biggest contributor to the increase in household spending in the June quarter was insurance and other financial services.

And over the past year, rents were the biggest driver of our increased spending.

But tobacco certainly was not. The June quarter saw tobacco consumption fall by 12.1% over the past 12 months – the biggest such fall ever recorded:

Labour productivity collapses, as do wages

For the fourth straight quarter, the annual growth of nominal unit labour costs – ie the amount is costs to produce one unit of output – fell:

This is a record and highlights the utter lack of wages growth and inflation in our economy. The ABS measure for prices it uses to calculate real GDP actually fell 0.4% over the past 12 months.

And thus because labour costs didn’t fall by as much as that, “real labour costs” rose. This would suggest Australia is becoming less competitive compared to other nations, but no one of any intelligence is really considering that is because of wages growth.

But productivity has taken a sharp fall – mostly because surprisingly there was a solid rise in hours worked in the past quarter. It saw annual productivity growth in the past year hit zero:

The five-year annual average growth is also down to 1.6% – just a touch below the long-term average of 1.7%. But it is not a good sign especially given we can no longer rely on export prices going up to fuel our standard of living.

And here we end with a nice depressing note (if you aren’t depressed enough).

The ABS’s broader measure of the change in national economic wellbeing is real net national disposable income. And here we see the fourth consecutive quarterly fall, and our national income now being 0.7% below where it was last year:

Australia’s economy is still slightly growing, but we sure as heck ain’t growing any richer. After all that maybe we do need some clowns, perhaps they could at least cheers us up.