The Reserve Bank of Australia appears to be losing its faith that the commodity price boom will push the economy into overdrive.
This faith, held steadfastly in recent years, was behind its repeated warnings until the middle of 2011 that the RBA would most likely have to control the boom's inflationary impulse by raising the cash rate.
Now, with industry layoffs and business closures starting to dominate the daily headlines and the trend in the number of people with jobs heading downward, the RBA has taken a distinctly more agnostic stance in its latest quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy, released this morning.
It is satisfied that the economy is undergoing the expected structural change as the mining sector commands more of the nation's productive capacity and the rest consumes proportionately less.
But the central bank is now not so certain about the net impact of that change.
In a discussion of the risks surrounding its outlook - on-target inflation for the coming few years with risks evenly spread either side - the RBA said Europe was the key downside risk to the economy.
If a "disorderly outcome" in Europe is not avoided, the RBA said in the statement, "it would lead to a severe recession in Europe, which would spill over to the rest of the world through trade, financial and confidence linkages".
Despite the scope for stimulus measures, similar to 2008, Australia's growth rate would slow.
But Europe is not the only source of uncertainty over Australia's outlook.
"More broadly, there is some uncertainty surrounding the growth outlook resulting from the significant structural change that is occurring in the economy.
"History offers little basis on which to judge the net effect on the economy of, on one hand, a once-in-a-century investment boom in the resources sector and, on the other, a high real exchange rate."
The RBA said there was a risk that the mining sector investment boom may be enough to cause the economy to grow more rapidly than the "around-trend" pace it was forecasting.
But this is balanced by the chance that things might not turn out so well.
"One risk is that this adjustment leads to larger job shedding in some sectors over the next few years and that employment growth is weaker than in the central forecast," the RBA said.
In other words, the mining boom may push the economy into overdrive but, thanks to its pernicious effect on Australia's competitiveness through the high exchange rate, it might equally cause it to shift back into low gear.
