Well, both reassuring news and an old, old message from Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens.
But the upshot was that inflation isn't a concern at the moment, so interest rates rises are off the agenda for a while.
There was in fact something of an each way bet in his much anticipated speech in Brisbane on the current outlook for the Australian economy.
The old message was the usual 'we will watch inflation and act early'. The reassuring news was that that won't be happening for a while.
Both messages revolve around 2008 and seem to be couched in terms of having to watch what happens next year because that's where the problems look like happening with inflation (and by implication, higher interest rates), but we have time to watch and room to manoeuver.
(Certainly until late July when the June quarter's Consumer Price Index will be out).
The market liked the news with the dollar easing and falling well from around 84.05 USc to 83.79 USc immediately after the speech. The dollar closed even lower at 83.58 USc in New York.
Our stockmarket firmed as bond yields came back a tick and will rise again today on the back of the speech and a solid night overseas.
Rather than a hawkish, anti-inflation, stick rates up now speech, it was a more measured assessment of where the economy is now and how the bank sees it travelling into 2008.
The AMP's Dr Shane Oliver said Mr Stevens' speech indicated that: "thanks to recent benign readings on inflation he remains reasonably comfortable with the current level of interest rates and is no hurry to adjust them.
"But with the Bank expecting inflation to rise next year the risks are still well and truly on the upside for interest rates," Dr Oliver said.
The Federal Government will like that: any move on rates off until after the Federal poll later this year.
But Mr Stevens did say the bank would not be stopped from lifting rates by the election.
The bears on inflation and interest rates would have hated it: all that frothing in the wake of last week's strong national accounts and employment figures, and the Governor gives an economist's speech (on the one hand, on the other hand).
But as Mr Stevens observed, that's how the economy looks at the moment.
In fact he went some way in pointing out how Australia, on the cusp of its 17th year of continuous economic expansion, seems to be unusually well balanced at the moment.
"Compared with what we expected a year ago, then, growth has turned out to be stronger, employment higher, but underlying inflation a little lower, and wages growth has been steady in the face of unanticipated labour market strength. This is quite a favourable set of outcomes," Mr Stevens observed.
But he warned that inflation was more likely to rise in 2008 than fall, a hint that a rate rise could be around the corner, but not quite yet.
"That is enough cause to err on the cautious side in setting policy, and to ask whether current settings are restrictive enough," Mr Stevens said.
"On the other hand, the somewhat lower short-term inflation outlook means that the starting point for a future pick-up in inflation is likely to be a bit lower than earlier thought."
Despite the potential inflationary pressures in the economy, Mr Stevens noted that recent inflation has eased, and the RBA had maintained its inflation forecast of 2.5 per cent for 2007, given in its last monetary policy statement.
"Data on labour costs received since then add credence to that forecast,'' he said.
And that's probably the most significant part of the speech because wages remain the big imponderable at the moment.
Work Choices, the resources boom, sluggish activity in the big states of NSW and Victoria; it's all making it hard to get an accurate reading of the way wages costs are travelling. (Although unit labour costs fell in the first quarter and sales and profits rose).
In fact he paid a lot of attention to what was happening in labour markets.
"My guess at present is that at least some of the explanation for these better-than-expected outcomes probably has to do with changed behaviour in the labour market.
"Despite, on most counts, the tightest labour market conditions for a generation, growth in most measures of labour costs has remained well disciplined for the past two years or more, after a mild acceleration earlier. Wages are rising quickly in some areas, but quite slowly in others.
"That is, relative wages are changing, adjusting to the forces at work on the economy, but without, so far at least, a serious inflation of the whole economy wide cost structure. This looks like a text-book case of adjustment.
"We could note as well that, even though firms have been saying for some years now that labour is hard to find, they seem in many cases to have found it nonetheless.
"A rise in immigration has helped to accommodate the strong demand for labour (though immigration, of course, itself also adds to demand to some extent). Rising labour force participation across a number of groups, especially among those aged over 55, has also been quite important.
"In economist-speak, the supply side of the labour market has recently been more ‘elastic' than it used to be.
"It is a very different environment from the one that was in place last time we had a terms of trade event of this magnitude, testimony to the host of changes to the way the labour market functions that have occurred over the past two decades or so," he said.
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Surveys of consumer and business sentiment and expectations are considered to be quite important barometers of opinion by the RBA because they attempt to reach beyond the cold figures in the Bur
