Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I listened very carefully to Senator Murray’s earlier comments and his comments now in moving his amendment. Although it is on a slightly different point, I was reminded that at one stage, according to the announcement of the Prime Minister and Mr Swan, the government had announced that it would make a number of changes to enhance the independence of the bank and the transparency of certain of its operations, and included in that was that the Secretary to the Treasury and the Governor of the RBA will maintain a register of eminent candidates of the highest integrity from which the Treasurer will make appointments to the board. Somehow or other that did not seem to make it into the Reserve Bank Amendment (Enhanced Independence) Bill 2008, and it is not clear that Labor has made or proposes to make any change to the status quo in that respect. In the past Treasury would, in consultation with the Reserve Bank, provide a list of possible candidates to the Treasurer, who then would make a recommendation to cabinet on possible board appointees. So we do not have a list and we do not really know what Labor proposes to do about the appointments.

But, on the broader point, I must say that, from the opposition’s perspective, we see some real merit in setting out a range of principles and criteria on which selection can be made on merit. I believe that, with regard to the independent scrutiny of appointments, its time has come. In the end, we have to give expression to all of this rhetoric: we either mean it or we do not. For those reasons, the opposition will be supporting the amendment moved by Senator Murray.