Some people spent much of this year worrying about how the two-speed economy was affecting the south-eastern states. There was concern Victoria was on the brink of recession and South Australia and Tasmania were already in one.
So when, a week or two back, the Bureau of Statistics finally published the figures for the real growth in the various states' gross state product last financial year, 2011-12, there would have been great interest from the media, right?
Wrong. The only definitive figures we've had for economic growth by state for the past 12 months went virtually unreported.
Why? Because they were a bit dated? No. More likely because they showed no sign of recession. They also showed the gap between the fast and slow states to be narrower than we'd been led to believe.
Turns out we did a lot of worrying for nothing, misled by figures we should have known are always misleading.
The unreported figures show Victoria's gross state product grew by 2.3 per cent for 2011-12 as a whole, just a fraction less than NSW's 2.4 per cent. South Australia grew by 2.1 per cent and even Tasmania pushed ahead by 0.5 per cent.
By contrast, Queensland grew by 4 per cent and Western Australia by 6.7 per cent. Overall, gross domestic product (the national measure) grew by a respectable 3.4 per cent.
A point to remember, however, is that the populations of the states are growing at quite different rates and this accounts for part of the difference in the rates at which their economies are growing. Only to the extent a state's gross state product per person is increasing is it better off materially.
Nationally, economic growth of 3.4 per cent in 2011-12 drops to 1.8 per cent per person. Queensland's growth drops from 4 per cent to 2.2 per cent, while WA's drops from 6.7 per cent to 3.7 per cent.
Not quite so much cause for envy.
If you recollect reading during the year figures a lot more dramatic than these, you're right, you did. As I say, definitive figures for gross state product are published only once a year, on an annual basis. The figures the bureau publishes each quarter as part of the national accounts are for something quite different: state final demand.
These figures are always widely reported by the media, with journalists happily assuming SFD and GSP must surely be pretty much the same thing. Trouble is, they're not. And the media's insistence on reporting these largely meaningless figures means the public is regularly misled about the extent of differences between the state economies.
State final demand and gross state product would be pretty much the same thing if the states' shares of Australia's exports and imports never changed and, more to the point, if there was no trade between the states.
It shouldn't surprise you there's a lot of trade between the states. Nor should it surprise you the mining states import a lot more from the other states than they export to them. The other side of the coin is the other states - particularly NSW and Victoria - export more to the mining states than they import.
This trade between the states spreads the benefits of the resources boom around the continent. In consequence, the much-quoted state final demand figures tend to overstate how well the mining states are doing and understate how well the other states are doing.
That's how the recession furphy got started.
Consider this. According to the latest figures for 2011-12, WA state final demand of 13.5 per cent turned into gross state product of 6.7 per cent, while Queensland's final demand of 8.6 per cent was more than halved to 4 per cent.
By contrast, Victoria's final demand of 2.2 per cent was increased a fraction to gross product of 2.3 per cent, while NSW's final demand of 2 per cent was increased to 2.4 per cent.
SA's final demand and gross product were the same at 2.1 per cent (meaning it neither wins nor loses from the inclusion of international and interstate exports and imports), while Tasmania's final demand growth of zero was increased to gross product growth of 0.5 per cent.
You see how misleading those quarterly state final demand figures are. They exaggerate the true extent of the differences between the states.
So why do the media make so much of them? Because, at a time when the resources boom is doing so much to change the industry structure of our economy, there's much interest in what this is doing to the respective sizes of the state economies.
The quarterly state final demand figures don't give reliable answers to this question, but they're the best that regularly come our way.
But also because the ever-intensifying competition between the news media has prompted them to select their news on the basis of all care but no responsibility. If some information is interesting or controversial it will be published, even if the journalists know or suspect it's dodgy. After all, if I don't do it, my competitors will.
The relative sizes of the six state economies have been changing since federation, partly - but not solely - because of their differing rates of population growth. But, though it's possible to exaggerate the extent to which the resources boom is causing the mining and non-mining states to grow at different rates, the states' relative sizes have been changing particularly rapidly in recent years.
Those recent figures no one bothered to report, known as the State Accounts, showed how the states' shares of overall gross domestic product have changed over the eight years to 2011-12.
In that time, NSW's share has dropped 3.8 percentage points to 30.9 per cent. Victoria's share has dropped 2.6 points to 22.3 per cent.
By contrast, Queensland's share has increased 1.7 points to 19.3 per cent, while WA - which long ago overtook SA in the pecking order - had its share increase a remarkable 5.4 points to 16.2 per cent of overall GDP.
That leaves SA's share falling 0.8 points to 6.2 per cent and Tassie's falling 0.3 points to 1.6 per cent. Its share is now less than the ACT's (2.2 per cent) and only a fraction greater than the Northern Territory's (1.3 per cent).
Whether we like it or not, the shape of our economy is changing.
