Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the presence of the Greens leader, the member for Melbourne, in the room. I recognise that he's a decent person—although, philosophically, we are absolutely poles apart—but I do worry about the member for Melbourne and the Greens getting any control or say on the Treasury benches after the next election. What we're seeing with this legislation tonight, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reserve Bank Reforms) Bill 2023, is the rub: the Greens are already having a large say on policy, including—worryingly and disturbingly—economic policy. If you read the article by the Sydney Morning Herald's economics analyst, Shane Wright, who is a very good journalist—because I trained him! I'll take some credit for that; I'm sure Shane won't mind. But this article is headed 'Chalmers eyes Greens lifeline for Reserve Bank overhaul', and he writes:

Treasurer Jim Chalmers may drive through the biggest overhaul of the Reserve Bank in a generation with support from the Greens after the Coalition walked away from months of negotiations and concessions aimed at winning bipartisan approval for the changes.

Yes, we did, and the member for Hume took this position for good reason. We've seen the to and fro between Labor and the independent Reserve Bank in recent days and times, and it's worrying.

But let me go back a little bit. I want to acknowledge also the work that Dr Philip Lowe did as the eighth RBA governor. He was deputy governor under Glenn Stevens from February 2012 until he became the governor in his own right in September 2016, and he held that August role until September 2023. He was castigated and derided by regional newspapers for some of the comments he made about inflation. It was difficult at that time to predict what might have happened, particularly coming out of the back of the worst of COVID-19, and Dr Lowe did a very good job. Dr Lowe and I went to school together at St Michael's Regional High School. He also attended Trinity Senior High School in Wagga Wagga.

It's not that I stick up for the likes of Shane Wright and Dr Lowe, but they both have been in Wagga Wagga and they understand regionality. They understand what ordinary, everyday people expect from those in positions of power. Both of them occupy or occupied positions of power, Shane as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald and Dr Lowe in his position with the RBA. I thought Dr Lowe was unfairly treated by some sections of the media during the latter time he was the RBA governor, and I want to put on the record my thanks to him for his role, for what he did and for appreciating and understanding the very great pressures on regional Australians and what he did during COVID. I think it's important to place those sorts of things on the record.

We are in an inflation crisis at the moment. We are in a crisis of confidence and a cost-of-living crisis. Much of it—some might even argue all of it—has been brought about by Dr Chalmers and by Labor policies.

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