Adrian Orr irresponsible to the last

"What of yesterday[, when Reserve bank governor Adrian Orr up and abruptly left]?

"... We had brief press releases from the Bank and from the Minister but no real answers. We are told there were no active conduct concerns – although there probably should have been, when deliberately misleading Parliament has happened time and again, and just recently – and yet the Governor just disappeared with no notice on the eve of the big research conference, to mark 35 years of inflation targeting that he was talking up only a week or two ago, (I also know that one major media outlet had an in-depth interview with Orr scheduled for Friday – they’d asked for some suggestions for questions). And with not a word of explanation. 

    "If you simply think your job is done and it is time to move on, the typical—and responsible – way is to give several months of notice, enabling a smooth search for a replacement. 

    "He could easily have announced something next week, after the conference, and left after the next Monetary Policy Statement in May.

"Instead, it is pretty clear that there has been some sort of 'throw your toys out of the cot and storm off' sort of event, which (further) diminishes his standing and that of the Bank (but particularly the Board and its chair). 

    "It all must have happened so quickly that we now have this fiction that Orr is on leave for the rest of the month ... After several hours of uncertainty, the Board chair finally decided to hold a press conference, which he didn’t seem to handle particularly well and (I’m told—I only have a transcript—in the end he too stormed off) we still aren’t much the wiser. ...

"I guess it is probably true that Orr can’t be forced to explain himself, although since he is still a public employee until 31 March I’m not sure why considerable pressure could not be applied. But even if he won’t talk the answers so far from either Willis or Quigley really aren’t adequate. You don’t just storm off from an $800000 a year job you’ve held for seven years, having made many evident policy mistakes and misjudgments, as well as operating with a style that lacked gravitas or decorum etc, with not a word. 

   "Or: decent and honourable people, fit to hold high public office don’t.

"... I had heard a story—apparently well-sourced—that the Bank had actually been bidding for a material increase in its funding, on top of the extraordinary increases of the last five years ... and Orr has long been known more for his empire-building capabilities than for his focus on lean and efficient use of public money, But ... [it] surely it can’t be the whole story.

"Comments by Quigley suggests that perhaps Orr was getting to the end of his tether, and some one or more recent things made him snap, reacting perhaps more than a normal person would do faced with the ups and downs of public sector life. It seems highly likely the budget stuff, and the desire to keep pursuing whims, was part of it, but it can hardly have been all. 

    "I don’t suppose he felt any great compunction about misleading Parliament so egregiously again…..but he should. And all this time – having stormed off with no adequate explanation—Quigley declares that he still had confidence in Orr.

    "Surely yesterday confirms again that both of them, in their different ways, were unfit for office.

"[Not to mention] the latest estimate of the losses to the taxpayer from the Bank’s rash punting in the government bond market in 2020 and 2021. $11 billion dollar in losses. Three and a bit Dunedin hospitals or several frigates or…..all options lost to us from this recklessness, undertaken to no useful end, and a loss which Orr endlessly tried to play down (suggesting it was all to our benefit after all), and about which not one of his Monetary Policy Committee members—one now temporarily acting as Governor—either dissented or gave straight and honest contrite answers. 

    "It has been 43 years since a Reserve Bank Governor was appointed from within. That is an indictment on the way the place has been run."

~ Michael Reddell from his post '$11 billion and out'