Gai couldn’t be contacted for comment to shed light on why he took the opportunity to speak.
The Herald also wanted to know whether he wanted the discussion on interest rates and trade uncertainty to be “exclusive” – as the chamber advertised it.
“With the global economy facing complex challenges, this is a rare opportunity to move beyond the headlines and gain real, nuanced understanding from one of New Zealand’s leading economic authorities,” the chamber said its advert for the talk.
The RBNZ declined the Herald’s request to attend or be sent an audio recording of the discussion.
A spokesman for the bank said the presentation was based on the May Monetary Policy Statement and supporting, publicly available presentation slides. He said it didn’t include any new information.
The RBNZ’s monetary policy handbook stipulates that any non-public remarks committee members make on monetary policy, or the economic outlook must be consistent with the committee’s official communications “to avoid providing, or appear to be providing, new information to a subset of individuals”.
Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold welcomed external committee members speaking more, but said the challenge was ensuring this was done in a “neutral” way, so all market participants had access to the same information.
Eckhold noted that livestreaming a presentation – as the RBNZ has done on numerous occasions – was always a good idea.
Wigram Capital Advisors principal Rodney Jones was more critical of the RBNZ for keeping the talk under wraps.
He believed it was important for the committee to be open about the diversity of views among members, and any healthy debates between members.
The committee, for only the second time since it was formed in 2019, wasn’t unanimous in its OCR call in May.
An unnamed member wanted to keep the OCR at 3.5% for now – amid all the global economic uncertainty – rather than cut it to 3.25%.
This was communicated in the publicly available minutes and various public engagements committee members who work at the bank had.
These included a routine press conference and appearance before Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee (both of which were livestreamed) and interviews with various media outlets.
On the other occasion an external committee member, Bob Buckle, gave a speech, it was published online.
Former external committee member Peter Harris also did two media interviews, with The Post and Bloomberg.
An RBNZ spokesman said, “It is up to individual external Monetary Policy Committee members to decide if they would like to speak publicly.
“There is no obligation for them to speak, nor a restriction on them if they want to, within the guidelines of the Monetary Policy Committee handbook and charter.”
Jenée Tibshraeny is the Herald‘s Wellington business editor, based in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. She specialises in government and Reserve Bank policymaking, economics and banking.
