That's why it's worth making a fuss about the news that, with the economy's growth of 0.5 per cent during the three months to June, we have now completed 25 years of continuous economic growth.

This is the first time we have been able to say that since regular measurement of gross domestic product began at the end of the 1950s.

No other developed country can make the same claim over the past 25 years. Indeed, few if any have experienced such a protracted period of continuous growth at any time.

So, if economic management was an Olympic event, we would have won gold at Rio and at several games before that.

And while we're patting ourselves on the back, we should note that, with our economy growing by 3.3 per cent over the year to June, we have one of the highest rates of growth in the developed world.

Longer. Higher. Another medal, thanks.

None of this says we don't have problems in our economy. Of course we do. It's just that other people's are a lot worse than ours.

Did you know that when the finance ministers are sitting around at meetings of the G20 and our treasurer starts sharing his troubles, the others just laugh.

They'd love to have our troubles.

And did you know that when our retiring Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens decides to say something at international meetings of central bank governors, the others stop fiddling with their phones and listen.

That's partly because our record is so much better, but mainly because of the respect in which our man is held.

It's more than coincidence that, early in the 25-year period, our politicians handed over control of interest rates to our central bankers.

Being Aussies, our inclination is to attribute our economic success to the good luck of China's resources boom.

It wouldn't occur to us that much of the credit should go to the good management of Aussie econocrats. More medals for Stevens and his immediate predecessors.

The 25 years began after the economy's last quarter of contraction in June 1991, marking the statistical end of the recession of the early 1990s, the one Paul Keating claimed "we had to have".

In reality, the pain of that deep recession lasted a lot longer. The rate of unemployment rose to a peak of 11 per cent in late 1992, and then took 11 years to get back down to where it happens to be today, 5.7 per cent.

To have avoided another severe recession for all the years since then is something for which we should be profoundly thankful.