Once again, a fast-failing, socialist Labor government is busily making sure to stack the institutions with its cronies before it’s thrown out on its ear. This time, it’s the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Jim Chalmers has appointed distinguished ANU professor Renee Fry-McKibbin and former Bendigo Bank chief Marnie Baker to the Reserve Bank’s new rate-setting board, as the Treasurer presses ahead with the most significant overhaul of the central bank in decades.
The pair will replace two existing external board members, businesswoman Carol Schwartz and Telstra director Elana Rubin who will instead serve on a separate committee overseeing the RBA’s governance.
The new dual-board structure follows a sweeping review of the central bank last year, co-authored by Professor Fry-McKibbin, which found the existing board collectively lacked the expertise to challenge the interest rate decisions of the governor.
In other words, the RBA’s interest rate decisions weren’t benefitting the Albanese government.
The changes will take effect in March, meaning the new rate-setting board will be in place for the RBA’s March 31–April 1 meeting, the final interest rate decision before the cut-off for a federal election, which must be held on or before May 17.
Well, isn’t that a coincidence?
Professor Fry-McKibbin joins the new rate-setting committee from the Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, and holds a PhD in economics from Melbourne University.
She will be accompanied by Ms Baker, a former financial services executive who spent 35 years at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, ultimately serving for six years as CEO and managing director.
So, a Canberra bubble insider and a woke corporate whose last act was to proudly announce its ‘Accessibility and Inclusion Plan’, complete with the requisite ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ bullshit: gotta try hard to get that ‘LGBTQ+ inclusion award’.
The rest of the rate-setting board leans heavily to the DEI cult, with more than half the appointments female, as well as a long-serving unionist. A former ‘indigenous voice’ advocate will be appointed to the separate governance board.
This is how the Long March works: the left keep stacking civic institutions with cronies and fellow-travellers – and the right do nothing about it.
The new appointments to the RBA board come after Dr Chalmers secured the passage of landmark reforms to the central bank through the federal parliament, relying on support from the Greens and Senate crossbenchers after the Coalition in September opposed Labor’s changes. While the Coalition had initially offered its support for the review’s findings, it later grew wary that Labor could “sack and stack” the proposed specialist rate-setting board, a fear that was fuelled by Labor’s appointment of Ms Rubin and Dr Ross, both ex-union officials, to the current board.
In an attempt to ease Coalition concerns, Dr Chalmers agreed to automatically transfer all six external members of the current board to the new monetary policy committee unless they expressed a desire to sit instead on a separate governance board.
However, after Dr Chalmers accused the RBA of “smashing the economy” via its aggressive run of rate hikes, opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor relinquished the Coalition’s support.
Yet, if they win government next year, you can bet good money the coalition will be too spineless to undo Chalmers’ damage.
Just as they’ve done nothing to reverse the years and decades of left-wing stacking of courts, tribunals, academia and just about every other political and civil institution.
