Andrew Hauser: Beware false prophets

Speech by Mr Andrew Hauser, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, to the Economic Society of Australia (Queensland), Brisbane, 12 August 2024.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Introduction

My theme today is learning and the role it plays in monetary policymaking.

So it is fitting that I am speaking with you, on my first visit to Brisbane, just a stone's throw from two great seats of learning – the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the University of Queensland (UQ).

QUT's Gardens Point campus sits on a stunning peninsula in the Brisbane River that is full of history. The Botanic Gardens started life in 1828 as a means of feeding the penal colony. And Old Government House was built in the 1860s for the first Governor of Queensland, Irishman Sir George Bowen and his wife, the tremendously-titled Contessa Diamantina di Roma (after whom the Diamantina River is named).

But the history of this area, and its connection with learning, is much older than that. The river – or Maiwar as it was long known – has been a source of life for the Jagera and Turrbal Peoples for thousands of years. And the area around Gardens Point was a sacred site, where Aboriginal women received ceremonial teaching – and men were forbidden. Today QUT is establishing a new Faculty of Indigenous Knowledges and Culture to recognise and foster Indigenous Australian excellence and innovation. Against that rich backdrop, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, pay my respects to their Elders past and present – and extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.

Head south-west down the river to St Lucia and UQ's Great Court and look upwards, and you may see a carving of a jovial man in a hat carrying an apple. The gargoyle is said to be Dr Colin Clark – a prominent British disciple of John Maynard Keynes. Clark was recruited in the late 1930s by Queensland Premier Bill Forgan Smith to help make the case in Canberra for more expansionist state spending, and establish one of the earliest systems of national accounts. When Keynes heard that Clark intended to settle in Australia, he tried to dissuade him, arguing that he would be more influential back in England. But Clark was having none of it: Australia, he wrote, was 'too remarkable an opportunity to be missed'; its people had 'minds which are not closed to new truths', and the country would 'show the world, in economics, politics, education and technology in the next twenty years'. In what seems to have been the clincher, he noted that 'economics ranks next after cricket as a topic of public interest'.