Are you in any pain? Doctors ask this because it's a pretty reliable indicator of whether there's a problem. It's not reliable, however, when you've popped a pill or two to mask the pain.

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This is the challenge facing the Australian economy.

Other than inflation (a big exception), the headline numbers aren't too bad. The economy grew 2.5 per cent over the past year. Private investment grew 3.6 per cent. Household consumption and retail spending are both growing despite cost-of-living pressures.

The numbers look OK. The problem is that the economy has popped a few pills which are making things appear rosier than they actually are.

In Australia's complex and diverse $2.7 trillion economy, there's just three things that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and masking the pain.

The first is immigration.

Australia's economic growth looks reasonable at 2.5 per cent. But strip out immigration, and things look shakier.

Without immigration, economic growth falls from 2.5 per cent down to just 1 per cent.

Australia has only had four quarters where economic growth was either negative or zero. Strip out immigration, and we've had a whopping 14 quarters of either negative or zero economic growth.

The second anaesthetic is even more specific, and even more novel.

Private investment grew a reasonable 3.6 per cent over the past year. There's just one problem: almost all of that growth came from a single thing: data centres.

It's one thing to have had investment growth come from a single sector.

It's another thing to have had almost all our investment growth come from businesses buying server racks and processing equipment.

The third anaesthetic, to put it bluntly, is rich old people.

Puzzle me this: how is it that we can be in a cost-of-living crisis........

© The Examiner