Just how good has Australia's economic performance been?

A good aggregate indication of a country's economic performance is real GDP per capita (GDP per person).

The graph from The Economist shows that the best performer over the last 3 and half years have been China and India. Argentina has also done very well, a fact that may give Americans and Southern Europeans some faith in the ability of an economy to recover from financial disaster! Indonesia has also been a quiet achiever. 

What you might notice is that the best performers have mainly been emerging economies with Taiwan and South Korea as exceptions. 

Australia's position is also fairly good, especially in comparison to other developed economies. Canada is still 1% below its pre-crisis level and America is down 3.5%. Britain has performed even worse. So while many might complain about wasted spending. In a time of stagnation policy-makers in Britain and the United States would do well to remember that cutting sending at such a time is likely to exacerbate the situation.