A further slide in business investment has economic forecasters pondering the unthinkable: that the Australian economy shrank in the September quarter, and that next week's GDP growth figure will have a minus sign in front of it.
If so, it'll mark an end to eight years of near-continuous growth since the economy shrank 0.7 per cent during the global economic crisis in the last quarter of 2008.
"Combining the weak capital expenditure data with soft September quarter retail sales and weak net export volumes, our current forecasts show a GDP number of 0.2 per cent quarter on quarter, or 2.5 per cent over the year," said AMP chief economist Shane Oliver.
"There is a real risk of a negative quarterly result, but there are still a few remaining GDP inputs to released next week that will give a better guide."
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RBC Capital Markets head of fixed income strategy Su-Lin Ong said the September capital expenditure survey was "just plain disappointing".
"Capital expenditure plans have been revised down and the modest upswing in non-mining investment has stalled for now." she said. "Weakness was evident across the board, underpinning a downward revision to our preliminary GDP forecast from 0.3 per cent to 0.1 per cent ahead of a number of partials early next week."
Capital Economics had previously predicted GDP growth of between 0.0 and 0.5 per cent, "but after these figures we have settled on a forecast of 0.0 per cent ," said chief economist Paul Dales.
"A fall is clearly possible".
The September quarter GDP result will be released on Wednesday.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has said it will be a key input to the budget update to be released 12 days later on December 19.
Mining capital expenditure slid a further 7.2 per cent in the quarter to be down 35 per cent over the year. Manufacturing investment slid 4.9 per cent to be down 6.2 per cent over the year. Investment by selected service industries slipped 1.9 per cent to be up 6.4 per cent over the year.
Investment plans for the entire financial year adjusted for average realisation ratios show mining down another 34 per cent, manufacturing down a further 2 per cent and services down 2 per cent.