PHOTO: RBA Governor Philip Lowe
RBA Governor Philip Lowe’s address to the National Press Club of Australia.
Thank you for the opportunity to address the National Press Club. It is an honour to have been invited.
The media and the RBA have a special relationship. Most people in the community hear the RBA’s messages through the media. You report on what we say, you filter it and you critique it. We also help you with your work. The RBA is a reliable source of information and analysis on issues that your audiences care about, including interest rates, housing prices and jobs. This means we have a strong mutual interest in understanding one another. I hope that today will help strengthen that understanding.
This is my first public speech for 2019, so I would like to talk about the year ahead and some of the key issues that the RBA will be focusing on. I will first discuss the global economy and then turn to the Australian economy and particularly the outlook for household spending. I will finish with a few remarks on the outlook for monetary policy.
At the outset, I want to emphasise that we don’t have a crystal ball that allows us to see the future with certainty. I know many of you are looking for definitive answers to questions like, ‘Where will the cash rate be this time next year?’, ‘How much will housing prices fall?’, ‘When will wages growth reach 3 per cent?’. They are all good questions. The reality, though, is that the future is uncertain. None of us can say with certainty what will happen.
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