The Reserve Bank of Australia is a step closer to its biggest restructure in three decades -- after treasurer Jim Chalmers assured his coalition counterpart the government could retain the power to override rates decisions. The government has made some concessions on its RBA reforms to try and win the opposition's support.
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00:00The government is essentially saying that the government of the day, whoever they are,
00:07will retain the power that they currently have to overturn a decision made by the RBA
00:13board.
00:14Now this is a power that no government has ever actually used, but it is something that
00:21the coalition wanted to retain in these reforms of the RBA that the government is currently
00:29undergoing.
00:30Now the government, as I said, has never used this power, Jim Chalmers wanted to remove
00:35it as was recommended by that review, but he has said that that can be retained in order
00:41to try and get the coalition to help it to pass this bill through the house.
00:47The reforms that are underway also split the Reserve Bank board into two.
00:53One will be called the Monetary Policy Board.
00:55That will continue to make RBA rates decisions.
00:59There will also be a second board called the Governance Board, which will run everything
01:03else to do with the Reserve Bank.
01:05Now the coalition wants all the current RBA board members to move to the Monetary Policy
01:11Board and keep making those rates decisions.
01:15Labor has essentially agreed that that can happen, unless one of those board members
01:21specifically asks not to be on the board.
01:23Here is the Treasurer Jim Chalmers talking about some of those negotiations with the
01:27coalition earlier.
01:29We've got our differences, myself and Angus Taylor, but in this instance I think he's
01:33got the right instincts and the right intentions.
01:36We've been engaging and negotiating in good faith and wherever there's been a lineball
01:40call, wherever there's been a view put to me by the opposition, I've tried to accommodate
01:45that view.
01:46I want these changes to be above and beyond partisan politics.
01:49I want them to be bipartisan.