The Turnbull government would have wanted this week's growth figures to turn the focus back on the economy after weeks of self-inflicted distractions.
However, Wednesday's national accounts - a comprehensive guide to the wellbeing of the economy - now look like producing a weak result and the government may not dwell on them for too long.
Economists downgraded their December quarter growth forecasts after figures on Tuesday showed exports were even weaker than some originally thought, and are set to cut a chunky 0.5 percentage points from the overall outcome.
This reflected temporary supply disruptions to coal exports.
GDP forecasts now centre on a 0.4 per cent growth result for the last three months of 2017, which would drag the annual rate down to 2.4 per cent from 2.8 per cent as of the September quarter.
This would be slightly lower than the 2.5 per cent the Reserve Bank predicted last month.
However, Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird says a weak growth result shouldn't "shift the needle" for the near-term outlook for interest rates.
"But any undershoot of the RBA's own numbers implies that a rate rise is still some way off," he said.
BIS Oxford Economics' Sarah Hunter was even more gloomy on the likely growth result, predicting a flat outcome when taking into account last week's disappointing business investment data for the quarter.
"A small decline isn't out of the question," Ms Hunter warned.
Unsurprisingly, the Reserve Bank left the cash rate at 1.5 per cent at Tuesday's monthly board meeting, a record low which has stood since August 2016.
Central bank governor Philip Lowe said the central forecast is for the Australian economy to grow faster in 2018 than it did in 2017.
"Business conditions are positive and non-mining business investment is increasing. Further growth in exports is expected after temporary weakness at the end of 2017," he said in a statement.
However, separate monthly figures also suggest 2018 got off to a sluggish start with retail spending growing by just 0.1 per cent in January, albeit coming off a 0.5 per cent drop in December.
There was also brighter news for farmers with the federal government's commodity forecaster, predicting a strengthening world economy will lift household incomes and support food demand growth.
This will especially be the case in regions important to Australia's agricultural trade, such as the emerging countries of Asia, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences said in its latest commodities review that was presented at its annual conference.
"Australia's agricultural future is now well and truly connected to Asian markets and will remain so for many decades, if not forever," KPMG Australia partner Doug Ferguson told the conference.
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