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Speaker 1: GEDDPT today in quarter four, that's the three months to December. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: most economists expected to land around point three point four percent.

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Speaker 1: The Reserve Bank was expecting point five percent. Kelly Echld,

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Speaker 1: Westpac chief economist, Kelly, good morning, Good morning. If it

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Speaker 1: lands where you think it will, which is point four

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Speaker 1: how significant is that? What does it mean for us?

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Speaker 2: Well, it's actually a bit data now, isn't it. I

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Speaker 2: mean we're talking about what happened in the fourth quarter

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Speaker 2: of last year. It will be encouraging that we will

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Speaker 2: have recorded a second consecutive decent quarter of growth, but

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Speaker 2: we're all looking forward to see how this Arab war

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Speaker 2: is going to influence growth sort of through the middle

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Speaker 2: of this year now, and obviously that's where the flock

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Speaker 2: of war is such that it's hard to know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously that's backward looking, and you've revised down your

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Speaker 1: fore cast I think two point eight percent down from

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Speaker 1: three point three percent for the year, which still doesn't

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Speaker 1: sound like defeat to me. Kelly. How much of this

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Speaker 1: comes down to sentiment and confidence? You know, when we

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Speaker 1: had the Liberation Day last year and businesses tightened, consumers tightened.

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Speaker 1: How much of this comes down to how confident we

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Speaker 1: feel going into it.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think it does matter in terms of the

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Speaker 2: size of the impacts. But there are some actual, real

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Speaker 2: economic dislocations occurring out there in the global economy now

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Speaker 2: because the oil isn't flowing, the fuel isn't flowing, and

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Speaker 2: economies depend on that. I think it's certainly true that

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Speaker 2: if the confidence and the consumers and the business sector

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Speaker 2: plunges relatively hard, then we'll get an earlier and larger

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Speaker 2: impact on the economy. I have optimism that, given we've

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Speaker 2: still got very strong commodity prices, the exchange rates helping

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Speaker 2: us out here, and also we've got quite low interest rates,

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Speaker 2: that we're very well placed, I think, to whether it

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Speaker 2: compared to what we could have.

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Speaker 1: Been hard to disagree with that. So what about overnight?

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Speaker 1: I see the oil has gone up again one hundred

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Speaker 1: and eight dollars a barrel. There's a gas field's been hidden.

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Speaker 1: Then there's the fair that more oil fields will be

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Speaker 1: hit as a result. Does that worry you or is

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Speaker 1: this just it's up and down at the moment.

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Speaker 2: No, I mean this continues to worry me because I

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Speaker 2: think what the markets are gradually working out here is

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Speaker 2: that It's a long road back to resolution of this issue.

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Speaker 2: Iran can probably expend relatively little effort to cause quite

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Speaker 2: a lot of damage. And you know, until that straight

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Speaker 2: small moves opens up, then nobody's going to be eating their.

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Speaker 1: Taco Kelly Echold, Westpac Chief Economists.

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Speaker 2: For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live

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Speaker 2: to News Talks it Be from five am weekdays, or

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