Why Australia Hasn't Had A Recession In 26 Years

In previous posts I pointed out that Australia had avoided recession for 26 years by keeping NGDP growing at a decent clip. Some commenters suggested that it wasn't monetary policy; rather Australia was a “lucky country” benefiting from a mining boom. That theory made no sense, because if your economy depends on highly volatile commodity exports then you should have a more unstable business cycle than countries with large and highly diversified economies. In any case, recent data completely blows that theory out of the water: