China grows the economy, Labor grows the debt

This week's welcome news that Australia is not officially in recession has highlighted the Government's duplicitous relationship with the mining industry.

Labor willed it to end - they saw it as something that just fortuitously 'happened' and they were the ones, we were assured, that would lock in Australia's prosperity 'beyond the mining boom'.

But when it seemed like ending as the GFC stymied international demand, talk of locking in prosperity was predictably absent.

These results are off the back of China demand, not the Government's stimulus payments:

As China kept buying Australian iron ore in the March quarter, so-called "net exports" added a huge 2.2 percentage points to GDP. That's the biggest net export boost in half a century and some claim it's a statistical quirk.

But it means that, amid the biggest global downturn since the 1930s Depression, Australia has staved off a headline recession because of demand from the rest of the world. And it comes as a huge surprise.