While the Australian economy recorded positive growth over the last economic quarter, Associate Professor Mark Crosby from the Melbourne Business School says Australia is still in recession.

"Most economists would not use the journalistic interpretation of recession i.e. two quarters of negative growth.  Most economists would have a pretty rubbery definition of it, but generally the settle on something 'significantly below trend'.  The Australian economy IS significantly below trend, with regards to GDP growth, so I would say we are in recession."

"In the US there is a committee that decides whether the country is in recession, and they dont just look at the GDP numbers they take in all sorts of factors.  That committee put the US economy in recession in November 2007."

"I think if we had a similar sort of structural committee in Australia, they would put the economy in recession around about September last year, if you took into account all the data.  Even now if you look at the structure of GDP, the farm sector- and its recovery from the drought - has been what's kept us in positive growth, where most other sectors experienced negative or zero growth."

However Associate Professor Crosby says that Australia still has recorded some positive numbers in the last quarter.  "Our 0.4% growth is better than most OECD countries - we're number one for GDP growth and bottom in terms of unemployment rate - and certainly the best in the G7, and signifcantly better than most of the other countries in our region. 

"But our economy is still very soft, our growth is still very poor, just not as bad as other countries.  To do better we do need our trading partners to be in better shape."

You can read more of Associate Professor Crosby's thoughts on the current GDP data in today's edition of The Age: http://business.theage.com.au/business/is-the-data-telling-us-big-fat-gdp-lies-20090604-bx7u.html.