Guest Post: The Reserve Bank plays Fast and Loose with its Mandate.

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

The Reserve Bank has three roles:

• operating monetary policy, eg by setting the Official Cash Rate (OCR) to keep prices stable
• helping to keep the banking, finance company and insurance sectors running smoothly
• supplying NZ’s money, eg notes and coins

We all know that the Bank has increased staff numbers 78% since Orr was appointed including an extra 15 in his office.  Pray, tell me, what do they do?

Maybe this is the answer below.  They write material totally irrelevant to the Bank’s core business, outside its mandate.  Meanwhile what they have been legislated to do – price stability – they have failed miserably. Accountability, anyone??

Here is an excerpt from the Reserve Bank’s latest Annual Report. 

Te ao Māori.  In our role as kaitiaki of the financial system, we seek to support a thriving Māori economy. We continue to work with a range of stakeholders to progress work on:

• understanding the Māori economy and the challenges around Māori access to capital;

• the Future of Money – Te Moni Anamata;

• better reflecting te ao Māori in the banking sector through our involvement with Tāwhia – Māori Bankers Rōpū; and

• collaborating with our central bank partners as a member of the Central Bank Network for Indigenous Inclusion.

Following the release of the Te Ōhanga Māori – The Māori Economy 2018 report , we are now well underway with our Māori Access to Capital work programme. This work focuses on quantitative and qualitative data to better understand Māori access to capital in the Aotearoa New Zealand economy. Te Waka Hourua – our Te Ao Māori strategy continues to evolve and we are focused, now more than ever, on supporting our people to be more confident in and capable of engaging in te ao Māori. An internal work programme has been launched that will look to support growing capability across Te Pūtea Matua, promote greater representation of Māori and inspire leaders to better understand and reflect our commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the work we do.

Te Ōhanga Māori – The Māori Economy 2018 – Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua (rbnz.govt.nz) Our Future of Money – Te Moni Anamata work programme considers the barriers that may emerge from a changing cash system. We are partnering with Māori experts to explore how access to physical currency supports financial inclusion and Māori economies to thrive independently on ancestral lands, which may be far from our main population centres and have more limited access to digital payments. We continue to be an active and committed member of the Central Bank Network for Indigenous Inclusion, which aims to share knowledge and practices, promote deeper engagement with Indigenous Peoples and foster a greater understanding of and education in indigenous economic issues and histories.

Throughout the year we hosted virtual discussions focused on the Māori economy, and we co-chaired the inaugural Indigenous Network Symposium. We have since passed on the responsibility for chairing the network to the Bank of Canada. We are a committed member of Tāwhia – Māori Bankers Rōpū, collaborating across the sector in unlocking the potential of Māori land and housing and growing Māori financial literacy and Māori representation in the banking world. Alongside these projects, we are consciously building relationships with iwi, Māori businesses and Māori organisations to engage a broader and more representative cross-section of society in all that we do.