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.

of newspapers the price on which australians typically focus most intensely – that of a house. the spill - overs of these activities have been felt around the country. for the fifty years up to 2005, resources sector investment had averaged just over 1½ per cent of national gdp. periodically, in a boom it tended to reach a peak of perhaps 3 per cent of gdp. this peak was about 8 per cent – nearly three times the size of the ‘ normal ’ peak, and easily the biggest such surge for over a century. the resources sector was doing 40 per cent of the nation's total business capital spending. and, as you know, a big share of that was occurring here in wa. on other occasions, these types of events have ended up being very disruptive for the national economy. terms of trade surges in the 1950s and the 1970s produced significant inflation on the way up and were followed by very major slowdowns or recessions in economic activity as the terms of trade fell back. that hasn't happened at a national level on this occasion. inflationary pressure was relatively contained on the way up, and while aggregate growth has been a little disappointing for the past couple of years, in the circumstances we face – including very difficult global conditions in the aftermath of the financial crisis – the outcomes are, i think, quite respectable. in fact, in a number of respects the economy has adjusted to the shocks in the way you would hope. productive resources were re - deployed to sectors where returns looked like they would be higher. this was true for capital but also for labour – relative wages shifted upwards in wa, for example. population shifted in response, we had fly - in - fly - out and an immigration response, facilitated by visa arrangements and so on. these were helpful parts of the adjustment process. likewise, the exchange rate adjusted, as would be expected in a flexible system. when we were here in early september 2011, the australian dollar was trading around us $ 1. 07 and had been as high as about us $ 1. 10. today it is about 35 per cent lower than that against the us dollar, and about 20 per cent lower against a relevant basket of currencies. this movement – both up and down – was part of what helped the economy through the commodity super - cycle without seriously inflating or crashing. through all that, tested macroeconomic policy frameworks have aimed at overall stability, and the financial sector has been kept in good shape by sensible