Economic Update October 2011

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Running Time: 5:31

Date: 01/10/2011

The European debt crisis continues to be the focus of world attention, and Australia won't escape the side effects.

The European economies wracked by debt problems may escape default, but German and French taxpayers will have to carry the burden, and even the Australian economy will feel the effects, with slower growth and stock market uncertainty adversely affecting investment. That's economist Professor Neville Norman's forecast for the rest of 2011 and the start of 2012. He says the big bounce that some predicted after negative growth in the March quarter didn't happen, and the outlook for industry remains sluggish.

The problems aren't helped, he says, by continuing Federal government insistence on securing a return to budget surplus in 2013, and by the way they've gone about introducing the Mining Resources Rent Tax and the Carbon Tax.