‘People are furious’: RBA deputy governor Andrew Hauser says more work to be done on inflation
Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Andrew Hauser has warned it will take years to fully get on top of the post-pandemic surge in inflation— an issue he knows Australians are ‘furious’ about.
Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Andrew Hauser has warned it will take years to fully get on top of the post-pandemic surge in inflation — an issue he knows Australians are “furious” about.
Ahead of the RBA’s next meeting on interest rates later this month, Dr Hauser acknowledged the weight of higher costs of living and interest rates but said inflation was the nation’s biggest problem despite the economy doing well on other fronts.
“When people go to the supermarket every week, they look at the price of the goods they’re buying, they compare them to where they were a few years ago and they say, ‘Hell, what’s going on here’,” he said on Tuesday.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“That is a very lasting and pervasive issue that is a function of the pick-up in inflation after COVID and will take years for us to fully resolve.”
He attributed the long-term issue to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the unexpected global boom driven by artificial intelligence and the weakness in the economy’s supply potential.
“Everywhere I go, I hear costs, costs, costs, inflation, inflation, inflation, and that’s our responsibility. We have to put that right,” Dr Hauser said of the RBA in an interview with the ABC.
“People are furious about inflation. I understand why. It’s unfair. It hurts people. It hurts people on low incomes. It damages price signals. It makes the job of companies difficult. What they want us to do is our job and bring inflation down.”
He insisted the public was not yet losing confidence in the RBA’s ability to reach its inflation target — the mid-point of between 2 to 3 per cent — but the RBA was “very alert to the possibility that we might”.
The RBA was taking longer than other central banks to get to that inflation target, Dr Hauser said, in an effort to keep as many people in work as possible.
But he added: “If at some point it becomes clear that that is not a feasible path, we’ll take another path ... we will raise interest rates further than otherwise we would need to do so”.
The RBA expects it will return to its inflation target by the end of next year.
