Take back the Reserve Bank to save Australian families NOW!
Reserve Bank Governor Dr Philip Lowe’s 12thinterest rate rise in 13 months to 4.10 per cent is crushing the life out ofAustralian families to pay for the RBA’s own sins.
For two decades, Lowe and his predecessorGlenn Stevens artificially lowered interest rates to near zero, deliberatelyinflating house prices and trapping millions of Australians in unpayablemortgage debts, which caused today’s cost-of-living crisis.
Now Lowe is acting like a central banker inthe 1930s Great Depression, imposing crushing austerity on his millions ofvictims among Australian families, sacrificing them to appease the angryinflation gods he provoked.
Pathetically, Treasurer Jim Chalmers tried todistance himself from the rate rise, insisting it was an entirely “independent”decision which is up to the RBA to explain; actually, in his statement Chalmersshowed he was more concerned with trying to prove the rate rise was not hisfault, than for the families getting crushed.
But here’s what all Australian families whohave been smashed by these rate rises should be very angry about: Treasurer JimChalmers has the power to overrule this rate rise to alleviate the pressure onhouseholds, but not only is he not stopping it, he has willingly agreed togive up his power to do so!
In April Chalmers enthusiastically embracedthe recommendation of the RBA Review to remove the power of the Treasurer tooverrule the RBA’s monetary policy decisions, promising to legislate it as soonas possible.
If implemented, the RBA would lose allaccountability to the Australian people, but come entirely under the effectivecontrol of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland,known as the “central bank of central banks”.
This is a wicked betrayal of Chalmers’ greatLabor predecessors Ted Theodore and Ben Chifley, who didn’t stand by whiletheir fellow Australians suffered terribly in the Great Depression.
Theodore, supported by Chifley and JohnCurtin, fought furiously to bring the Commonwealth Bank under governmentcontrol, so instead of crushing people through brutal austerity the governmentcould use the Commonwealth Bank to deploy credit to create jobs and savehouseholds.
While Theodore didn’t succeed in 1930, Laborcontinued to fight and in 1945 Chifley enshrined the power of the Treasurerover the government’s bank in legislation, thus establishing a principle of democraticcontrol that Robert Menzies continued when he split off the RBA as the centralbank in 1959.
Even former Treasurer and Prime Minister PaulKeating, despite having initiated the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank inthe early 1990s, has defended this principle of democratic control, telling ABCon 28 April that Australians must retain control of the RBA:
“This power, reserved to the treasurer underthe Reserve Bank Act, provides due regard to the parliament and theexecutive government in its anchored position of primacy in economic policy andmanagement”, Keating said. “Political power, its management and employment inoffice, must, in a working democracy, take precedence over any subordinatebureaucratic structure.”
Now is the time for Australians, drawingtheir inspiration from Theodore, Curtin and Chifley, to demand the governmentagain take control of the RBA to save families from its crushing austeritypolicy of interest rate hikes.
The government must overrule the RBArate rises and instead direct the RBA to:
- address inflation without suffocating households and the real economy, including through credit guidance for the banks to selectively restrict their lending into wasteful speculation that fuels inflation, and instead encourage lending into investments that boost productivity and improve supply chains;
- save the households trapped in so-called mortgage “prison” and unpayable debt by financing the private banks, under strict conditions so the banks don’t profiteer, to restructure mortgages;
- fund a massive expansion of public housing to save desperate families and make house prices affordable again.
The Australian Citizens Party calls on allAustralians to join this fight to make the RBA serve the people.
Click here to sign the CitizensParty’s petition for a post office people’s bank.
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