For the Australian debt market, February ended with whimper. This seems a strange outcome given that the corporate reporting season was such a strong one, with most companies reporting results that were either in line with, or exceeding, analysts' expectations. This should have translated into some good post reporting bond issuance.One bank, Westpac, took the opportunity to sell A$3.0 billion of bonds in one of the largest issues the market has seen but that was it. None of the other major banks followed Westpac's lead and the only true corporates to issue were Fonterra Cooperative Group and CitiPower, which between them sold just A$325 million of bonds.With A$12.7 billion of corporate bonds sold in the first two months of 2014, the outlook for the remainder of the year appears weak. This is the slowest start to a year in the corporate bond market since 2006, when A$9.7 billion of bonds were sold.Last week the Financial Services Council drew attention to new research on its behalf by Mercer, which benchmarks Australia's asset allocation for superannuation against 11 other comparable private pension schemes around the world. Not surprisingly, the research puts Australia in a good light and largely seeks to justify our large allocation to domestic equities in superannuation portfolios.The Financial Services Council notes that Australia, Canada, the US and UK have 35 per cent to 50 per cent of superannuation assets allocated to equities. Guess whose allocation is 50 per cent and guess at which end of the range the other three countries sit?The Financial Services Council claims that Australia's small corporate bond market with a home country bias results in a higher allocation to equities, seemingly for want of any other asset classes to invest in. The report once again highlights that the main difference between the Australian superannuation system and other comparable systems is a lower allocation to fixed income assets.This report continues the argument that the problem is one of supply: there simply isn't enough bond issuance in the market to justify investment.There is also an apparent immediate supply problem that may well explain the poor start to 2014. The quarterly capital expenditure report compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and released on Thursday, shows that companies surveyed over the December quarter plan to cut capital expenditure by 17 per cent in the next financial year.If companies aren't investing, then there will be little demand for debt and therefore little corporate bond issuance. With a 17 per cent cut back being the largest in two decades if realised, and thus raising fears of a looming recession, then the domestic corporate bond market could be facing a very quiet year or two.However, there is also a demand problem, since a lot of supply leaves our shores every year because that supply is not investment grade.Last year there was A$2.8 billion of such issuance that was lost to the domestic market - in 2010, the amount was A$6.3 billion.Not surprisingly, many of these issuers come from the resources sector.