Australia Should Learn from Brazil in Fighting the Resource Curse

Australia continues to suffer from the "Dutch disease" with export revenues from the resource extraction industries pushing up the value of the local currency and thereby making manufacturing and the services (such as tourism) uncompetitive. This is a theme we have discussed before - see for example Australia's Two Speed Economy. The situation continues worsening, with an anticipated return to trade surplus failing to materialise in the Feb trade data released today (deficit of AUD -480mm, relative to consensus for a surplus of  AUD 1.1bn).

It should be quite clear that the strong currency is hurting many non-resource sectors of the economy. Yet other than including in their Monetary Policy press release a boilerplate statement to the effect