Dr Richard Denniss

We know they were bad at forecasting a year ago.

Now, to be clear, I don't have a crystal ball.

I don't know exactly what's going to happen to the world economy in 12 months' time, but I also know no one at the RBA does either.

And the fact that things are unknowable doesn't mean that we still don't have to make hard decisions today about what would be better or what would be worse.

The problem's not that the RBA doesn't know, because frankly, no one does.

The problem is that they're willing to put all of the risk

all of the risk on driving up unemployment while real wages fall.

And, you know, they're insulated from the consequences of these enormous choices that they're making.

Good question.

I don't think there's a good answer, but we are different.

We're taking a lot more risk and we're loading up a lot more pain on low and middle income earners than people in other countries are.

I think that part of it is that the RBA has got it wrong for so long.

The thing they really kind of are worried about now is not being wrong.

They're kind of afraid of being out of touch.

So when all these kind of bank analysts say, we expect them to cut rates or we expect them to increase rates, I think the RBA is listening to the cheer squad or the commentators way too loud.

I think they're

uncertain what's going to happen, but they would rather be kind of doing what all the finance sector's telling them they should do, because at least then if they're wrong, they're wrong in what they think is good company, whereas I think their job's to be right on our behalf.

Recession.

The recession we had to have in the early 90s was literally caused by the Reserve Bank jacking up interest rates to fend off its fear of inflation.

These are very, very real risks.