Australia's mining-powered economy grew by 1% during the September quarter in a result hailed by the government as "exceptional" given the ongoing global turmoil.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said mining and construction underpinned the robust performance, which represented on-year growth of 2.5% and followed upwardly revised growth of 1.4% for the three months to June. Economists had expected gross domestic product to rise 0.8-1% quarter on quarter and 1.9-2.1% from a year earlier.
Treasurer Wayne Swan said the data were "an exceptional result at a time of heightened global instability, turmoil in Europe and slowing global growth".
But analysts warned of growing disparities in the economy and an underlying weakness being masked by the mining boom and recovery from summer floods and cyclones.
Resources-rich Western Australia state saw seasonally-adjusted demand grow 8.4% in the quarter and 16.4% in the year while coal and gas-mining Queensland was similarly strong. Most other regions were flat or went backwards, clear evidence of some economists have called the "two-speed or three-speed economy".
Construction contributed 0.4 percentage points and mining 0.3 points to GDP growth, which was slightly offset by growing imports and running down of inventories.
Swan said growth was underpinned by a 12.7% "surge" in business investment in the quarter and above-trend household consumption despite the hit to confidence from debt woes in Europe and the US.
A jump in car sales as Japan's car sector recovered from March's earthquake and tsunami accounted for a large part of the consumer spending. New engineering construction leapt 31% in the quarter to be more than 50% higher year-on-year - its strongest annual growth in about 30 years.
"While much of the increase was in the resources sector there was also a healthy increase in manufacturing investment," Swan added. "These figures are a resounding vote of confidence in our economy at a time when many advanced economies are struggling to grow at all, and face increasingly fragile economic positions with very high unemployment," he added.
Canberra last month slashed its growth forecast for 2011/12 from 4% to 3.25%, and flagged the same again for 2012/13 - a downward revision from the 3.75% expected in May.
