regulation and generally competent management. while the episode is not yet over, at this point the economy overall has been recording growth. we will very shortly get a reading on gdp and the various expenditure and income accounts for the september quarter. looking ahead, nationally, the outlook appears to be for a continuation of moderate growth. the reserve bank issued its latest forecasts a few weeks ago. i won't go into detail here, but, in brief, year - ended gdp growth is forecast to be in the range of 2 to 3 per cent in june 2016 and to pick up a bit during the following year. domestic inflationary pressures are expected to remain subdued. inflation is forecast to be in the range of 1½ to 2½ per cent over the year to bis central bankers ’ speeches june 2016, and 2 to 3 per cent over the year to june 2017. the unemployment rate is projected to remain around 6 per cent or a little above over the next year, before gradually declining. we do not make detailed forecasts at state level, but obviously the picture for wa relative to the rest of the country looks different from the way it did a couple of years ago. previously, economic activity was very strong in the west and the north - east, driven by the investment boom, while in the south - east of the country it was somewhat subdued. now, as the mining investment boom in the west is in the reversal phase, economic activity here in wa is more subdued, while in the south - east it is picking up. these differences are plain in most of the economic data. whereas business investment in nsw and victoria is growing ( albeit modestly ), in wa it is, of course, contracting very sharply ( as it is in queensland ). i think most people have understood for some time that this was on the cards. consumer spending and employment growth in wa, which had outpaced the national average by a wide margin, have come back to be a bit below the national average. the rate of wa's population growth has slowed. housing prices have declined a little, while those in sydney and melbourne have, at least until recently, risen at quite a clip. measures of business conditions in wa are at about their long - run average, having been a long way above that for some years. so wa has ‘ come back to the pack ’, though the pack has actually picked up some speed in the meantime. yet even with all that, employment in wa is still increasing.

basis that the stability of the financial system can be tomorrow ’ s objective, for the next person. but in order to achieve this, we need to be very clear on the benefits of financial stability. one of the questions i get asked most frequently is how we will ensure that the lessons of the crisis stick. we can only achieve this if the case for financial stability is well understood. there is a very clear parallel here with monetary policy. the success of monetary policy is founded on public acceptance of the benefits of sustained low inflation. that did not come easily, as the experiences of the 1970s taught. but once that public acceptance and interest started to become embedded, the task of monetary policy became easier – not easy, but easier. in this important sense, no such policy making apparatus can be independent of the will and interest of the public. and nor is the task of ensuring public acceptance ever finished. monetary policy has demonstrated that a firmly established and lasting institutional framework for policy making is a necessity. but exactly what is the public interest in financial stability? this can be a harder question to answer than for monetary policy, because financial stability cannot be so readily summarised in a statistical series. there is a temptation to generalise that you certainly know it when it isn ’ t there. i think there are at least four things that the public should want as part of the overall stability of the financial system. first, that they can have confidence in the safety and soundness of the institutions that hold their money and savings and write policies to protect them against risks. second, that those institutions have the capacity to undertake the stable and sound provision of financial services to the economy, including of course lending. third, that the system does not do business and exist on the basis of an implicit commitment that the state will have to use public money, the public ’ s money, to bail out firms that get into trouble. and fourth, that the public can place trust in firms and markets based on their reputations and the transparency of their dealings. regulation is important and it can help to foster that trust, but it cannot substitute for the trust that the public needs to have, in firms and markets. the state is not there to support the industry, and regulators are not there to substitute for trust in and the reputation of firms and markets. some important principles follow from the identification of the public interest in financial stability. first, a competitive financial system can only exist if it is rooted in stability : competition and stability