The cost of flooding in Queensland

Mother Nature’s new year’s gift to Australia is nothing to celebrate -- floods in Queensland that are going to cost the nation dearly.

How much, at this point, is still guesswork. But the jaw-dropping quote from Warwick McKibbin, a member of the central bank's policymaking board, in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday morning was that destruction could wipe one percentage point from the nation’s economic growth.

The paper quoted him as saying If you look at the infrastructure damage and all the networks that have been broken, a hit to the economy of one percent is not out of the question.”

A percentage point of Australia's A$1.3 trillion $1.28 trillion...