The Australian economy has proven its resilience, recording 17 years of uninterrupted growth to 2007-08 despite two global downturns. The strength of the Australian economy is well recognised. In 2009, the worldwide executive opinion survey conducted for the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook assessed Australia's economy as the third most resilient in the world, behind only Qatar and Norway. Australia has been rated the most resilient economy in the world for six of the last eight years. For countries with populations greater than 20 million, Australia again ranked first in 2009, and on this basis has topped this indicator in seven of the last eight years.

Sound macroeconomic policies and structural reforms over almost three decades have increased Australia’s responsiveness to shifts in the global economy and delivered world's best practice financial, legal and political systems. This has enabled Australia to better withstand global economic pressures and maintain strong economic fundamentals including record low unemployment, robust business investment and household spending, and growing exports. In 2007-08, Australia's export earnings continued to rise sharply reflecting rapid growth in commodity export prices.

Australia is expected to be one of the world’s better performing countries over the next 12-18 months. This position is due to Australia’s strong economic momentum prior to the global financial crisis, timely fiscal and monetary response, flexible exchange rate and resilient financial system. In its June 2009 edition of Economic Outlook, the OECD anticipates that Australia will experience the mildest recession of the 30 member countries in 2009. The Organisation is forecasting a 0.4% fall for Australia’s GDP in calendar year 2009, compared with an average decline of 4.1% for all OECD economies over the same period.