KEY POINTS:
It should have been a day when the Reserve Bank Governor delivered a single clear message to the household sector, along these lines:
"I have been warning for six months now that you need to go easy on the borrowing and spending, at least until the productive side
of the economy can catch up. You have taken no notice. So I have raised interest rates and there is more where that came from - until I see a slowdown in the housing market and consumer spending. Because that is what has to happen to keep inflation in check and ensure the next economic upturn is sustainable."
Had he left it at that, no problem. But he muddied the waters by talking about alternative measures officials are working on to make the housing market more responsive to what he does to interest rates. It was a bad call.
As National's finance spokesman Bill English was quick to point out, the Governor is a long way from having any instrument other than the official cash rate to wield and there is considerable doubt as to whether any effective alternative can be found.
Or even if it should be. What is your problem? English asked (in effect). Inflation is in the target band, the economy has just had a soft landing, you say monetary policy is working, just not as fast as you would like.
Publicly at least, Bollard insists that the bank's brakes have not failed, they have just been spongy this time round, in part because of things outside his control like the low level of interest rates in Japan.
He says at least half of the increases in the official cash rate he has delivered since the start of 2004 have, eventually, flowed through to the effective or average mortgage rate borrowers face, despite their preference for fixed-rate loans.
But under questioning from English he indicated he had felt unable to raise interest rates as much as he would otherwise have liked, for fear of "hugely hurting" exporters.
Hence the quest for alternative measures that would make the housing cycle less immune to what the rest of the economy is going through.
But that threatens to undermine the credibility, and therefore the effectiveness, of the only tool he has.
It suggests the man wielding it has lost confidence in it. At a time when he needs to look singleminded and scary to the household sector, that is a bit of an own goal.