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There's an awful lot our panel got wrong about 2015-16.
Like the Treasury, it expected creditable growth in nominal GDP of 3.5 per cent, enough to lift profits and company tax and eat into the deficit.
Instead it languished at 2.5 per cent, less than even the most dire of the panel's pessimists predicted.
Like the Treasury, the panel hadn't expected the iron ore price to fall as far as it did. It predicted a ASX200 share index of around 5800. Instead it'll be closer to 5200.
Australia looks like collecting less company tax in 2015-16 than in any year since 2010-11.
While right about mining investment (the panel expected a slide of 25 per cent) like Treasury it expected a bounce in non-mining investment. Instead non-mining investment slid a further 2 per cent.
This year Treasury has pushed out its forecast of a recovery by another financial year. Our panel hasn't. It's expecting next to no growth in the next 12 months, having learnt from history.
Like just about everyone, it got inflation spectacularly wrong. Its average forecast for underlying inflation was 2.5 per cent, right in the middle of the Reserve Bank's target band.
Instead the underlying rate slid to 1.55 per cent and the headline rate to 1.3 per cent. Although still far too high, Neville Norman came closest, expecting 2.1 and 1.8 per cent.
But he was wrong about other things, expecting far too high nominal GDP growth, just as Steve Keen who was right about non-mining investment expected far too high inflation.
This year there's no award for the best forecaster. None of our panel emerged looking good.
The 10-year bond rate looks like ending the financial year below 2 per cent, an all-time low. Our panel had expected it to climb rather than fall.
The UK bond rate is close to 1 per cent and the German rate is less than zero.
It was also more or less right on the Reserve Bank cash rate, on balance expecting no change, which is how it would have turned out had the board not sneaked in a half-hearted cut on budget day.
On some measures it was too pessimistic. Only Stephen Koukoulas picked a headline GDP growth rate of more that 3 per cent.
Most of the forecasts has a "2" in front of them and some had a "1". It was also far too pessimistic on jobs. Most of the panel expected the unemployment rate to climb rather than fall.
Only Renee Fry-McKibbin and Shane Garrett picked something close to 5.7 per cent.
The contours of the panel's mistakes tell us much about the way the economy surprised us all in 2015-16. It was better on the surface, worse underneath.
Peter Martin is economics editor of The Age.
