The "good" economic growth figures for the   September quarter capture a brutal reality about today's and tomorrow's Australia: after the resources boom we are getting poorer. 
It's a reality not widely -appreciated: understandably, in the parallel context of million-dollar ordinary suburban homes; and indeed is being both masked and offset to some -degree by exactly the widespread "cashing-in" of such Tattslotto-style windfalls.
But it is a reality that ulti-mately overrides one-off property profits and will set the parameters for just about everything in our lives, from jobs and wages, through government -finances and the ability to spend on public services, and on to the whole tax debate.
There's a seeming contradiction or paradox in the GDP figures. We continue to record relatively strong growth in the economy. And isn't economic growth supposed to be what it's all about? Growth boosts -incomes and living standards.
That's how we got from the grinding almost universal poverty (and early deaths) of the 19th century to almost universal prosperity (and longevity) -unimaginable to even kings and queens previously. Yet it's become an empty growth. We're producing more but earning less; we are shipping off more and more of Western Australia to Japan and China and getting less per tonne and so more or less the same dollars overall.
The story is captured in the graphs. The Terms of Trade shows the difference between the prices we get for our exports and the prices we pay for our imports. In fact the rise and then even more spectacular rise and equally spectacular fall is -almost all about the prices of our exports, and coal and iron ore in particular and even more -especially iron ore.
The top graph tracks our economic growth (GDP) that measures the volumes of what we produce, including what we export; and our national -income, which is broadly, what we earn, mostly from each other but also from exports.
As commodity prices soared higher and higher through the 2000s, this flowed straight into incomes. But from 2011 our commodity prices have been on a long, relentless slide. This has coincided with huge increases in the volumes of coal and iron ore we are shipping, as the new mines built by BHPB, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and the others in -response to those lush prices started to produce and ship.So for the past four years we've had this "prosperity-lite prosperity". We are producing more and more; we are shipping off more and more of WA. But our incomes aren't growing.