While Australia has enjoyed a near-record run of economic growth without experiencing a recession, business conditions are not necessarily reflecting that.
Two firms with an acute sense of the economy's performance have said certain issues, such as the reliance on mining and political uncertainty, are not helping business.
Maritime Container Services, in Sydney's south, is on the front line of Australia's non-mining export industry, making it a bellwether for the national economy.
The company's director of Logistics and Operations, David Wright said, while business was "not too bad", it could also be be going better.
"In an nutshell [it's] not going gangbusters," he said.
Mr Wright's description of how the business was faring neatly captures the national economic picture.
Despite a record run without a "technical recession", Australia's economy is far from running at full speed.
The December quarter economic growth figures, released today by the ABS, showed a very strong three months, but annual growth was a mediocre 2.4 per cent.
If you removed the economic Band-Aid that is the resources sector, Mr Wright said, Australia's sore spots would be very exposed.
A focus on Australian made products
An especially painful raw nerve, Mr Wright said, was the nation's inability to produce things we normally buy from overseas.
He claimed that for every 10 containers that come into the country full of fridges and microwaves, six that would normally contain Australian made products simply go out empty.
"The volume we see going out are our rural commodities," he said.
Australia's commodities export boom helped save the economy from the global financial crisis (GFC).
But Mr Wright said he feared Australia had become too reliant on mining exports, and the economy's "backbone" was not strong enough.
"We export very high quality materials, which is a credit to us and a credit to the rural sector, because in my view, at this point in time, it's probably holding us up," he said.
"Otherwise from our perspective we would probably be exporting not a lot."
Mr Wright said what the country desperately needed was to regain the ability to produce more — and not just minerals from the ground.
"I don't think we're a nation that wants to turn out piles of rubbish," he said.
"But I think we want to turn out — like we're doing in our agricultural sector — high quality, world leading, best-in-class products."
He called for the agricultural and manufacturing sector to be better supported and a focus on Australian made products.
"There should be a push for Australia to be producing more of the stuff that we consume."
Business owners 'are uninspired'
A lack of faith in the Australian economy appears to be filtering through from large, to small and medium-sized businesses.
Quantum Business Finance provides credit to small to medium-sized companies so they can buy things that help grow their businesses, such as machinery and equipment.
But Mr Gandolfo, one of its partners, said recently business owners had stopped knocking on his door for as much money.
"Things are a little bit down actually on last year, probably about 10 to 15 per cent down across the board," he said.
Despite the fact most Australians have some sort of job, and interest rates remain at all-time lows, Mr Gandolfo said business owners were uninspired.
He said the global financial crisis was unlike recessions of the recent past, such as in the early-1990s, where people could generally pinpoint when it was over and allow themselves a collective sigh of relief.
"And then everybody is head down, bum up and working towards growing the businesses again and doing that with confidence," Mr Gandolfo said.
But he said when it came to the GFC, there seemed to be no "definitive end".
"Even though we came out of it reasonably unscathed in Australia, there was still a lot of talk about the economy in the US and there was a lot of noise around the economy in Europe," he explained.
Mr Gandolfo said it was almost as though Australia missed out on a purge to sort everything out and get back to normal.
He also blamed the frustrations of the government in dealing with cross-bench senators for the lack of business confidence.
"So it's not like there's political instability, but there's just no clear political direction, because there seems to be a lot of compromise that seems to be made," he said.
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