At last, the RBA board caught up with the real world and delivered the overdue rate cut most well-trained experts and mortgage belt sufferers expected in July.

Not to sound ungrateful, but it’s one rate cut is now in the bag, making it three for the year but what about the other two rate drops most economists have been expecting?

Apart from getting the good or bad news after every Reserve Bank meeting, we now get the Governor, Michele Bullock doing a show and tell on what were the thoughts of her board, which she has a big influence on, and what might lie ahead for future rate changes.

So, let me unpack what has emerged following the drop in the official cash rate from 3.85% to 3.6% yesterday. Here goes:

1. At least one more cut this year looks a certainty.
2. Don’t rule out two cuts.
3. The RBA suspects the cash rate will bottom out at 2.85% next year, which would be three more 0.25% cuts!
4. If we get two more cuts this year, someone on an $500,000 home loan will pocket around $415 extra a month in lower repayments since the start of the year, after a total of five cuts.That is, three so far and possibly two to come.
5. The RBA boss says we’ve been saving our rate cuts, which has helped lower inflation, which should also help deliver more rate cuts.
6. Unemployment is expected to be steady around 4.3% but the higher it goes more rate cuts could follow.
7. The RBA does not expect Trump tariffs to be a big problem for the economy.
8. The Governor told us that the RBA’s economics team have downgraded the outlook for Australia’s productivity growth, which implies real wages are unlikely to improve much in the short-term.

This last point could be the fly in the ointment that reduces the number of rate cuts we can receive. You see, productivity means producing more from a given amount of resources put into producing something, and really means workers, the equipment/technology they use and the smarts of the leader of the business.

If productivity is rising you expect great production, profits, jobs and lower costs, which means lower inflation. It’s the Goldilocks economic porridge the RBA wants to consume because it creates a “just right” economy which is not too hot leading to inflation not too cold, meaning workers are feeling the chill of being on the dole queue.

The SMH’s Shane Wright looked at the central bank’s numbers and reported the following: “The Reserve Bank now reckons its best guess for productivity growth is about 0.7 per cent over the next two to five years. That’s almost a third lower than what it had been assuming.”

This is a timely revelation with the Economic Reform Roundtable, which was first called a productivity roundtable, set to look at ways to boost our productivity next week. This will create a lot of news headlines, but the real news will be what the Albanese Government commits to boost our productivity.

The only way the Government can seriously help boost productivity is to adopt the old sporting war cry: “No guts, no glory!”

That be the only relevant testing filter of whether this roundtable becomes a watershed in Australian economic history or just another talkfest from a tribe of political pygmies.

Given the majority this Government has, it’s not to much to ask that they really make the kind of differences that the likes of Hawke, Keating, Howard and Costello achieved with lesser majorities in our Parliament in years gone by.