Andrew Dickens: My take on GDP

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · Mar 23, 2025 · 2m · transcript

While I was away tramping all over the top of the Coromandel Peninsula, we had some good and bad news.

GDP came out better than we expected with a rise of 0.7% in the fourth quarter, which should signal the start of green shoots and recovery and confidence.

But at the same time, the consumer confidence figure came out and it was the worst we’ve seen since the 90s.

And then Paul Bloxham, the Australian economist who invented the rock star economy name, came out and said our recession has been the worst in the OECD.

So why aren’t we confident? And why was our recession so hard?

Here’s my take…