Michele Bullock and Danielle Wood have stared down the ALP bully machine. They deserve our respect

From left to right: Michele Bullock, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Danielle Wood, Chair of the Productivity Commission; and Jim Chalmers, Treasurer of Australia

One of my children, at an annoying age, would often play a song I loathed. The lyrics were mindless. Is rap anything else? The chorus, if a musical word can tolerably be used in this context, went like this: “It wasn’t me.” Over and over again: “It wasn’t me.” Not the kind of message you want your kid to absorb, even accidentally, given the main purpose of playing it was to rile me.

My child is all grown up now, and a more responsible adult you’d struggle to find. But that song was ringing in my ears when Jim “It wasn’t me” Chalmers blamed the RBA’s position on interest rates for “smashing the economy”. In other words, it’s not his fault the economy is languishing with the latest figures revealing a growth rate of 1 per cent over 12 months to June. The weakest annual growth since the early 1990s recession – if you put the pandemic to one side – is, according to Chalmers, the fault of Reserve Bank of Australia boss Michele Bullock, who has refused to lower interest rates.

Neither side of politics is good at owning the economy when it’s on the downward track. But Labor’s ferocious blame-shifting is on another level. Chalmers’ former boss, Wayne Swan, gave Bullock an even bigger serve, accusing the RBA of “punching itself in the face” and “hammering households, hammering mums and dads with higher rates, causing a collapse in spending and driving the economy backwards”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers holds a press conference at Parliament House discussing the RBA legislation. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Bullock made it clear the central bank’s focus is inflation – not interest rates – given inflation is the main cause of Australia’s economic ­woes. As Bullock said last Friday, while high interest rates will undoubtedly cause great pain to some Australians, high inflation will cause even greater pain to all Australians.

One can understand Labor’s disappointment. The party bestowed a great honour on Bullock to lead the country’s central bank. And damn it, she’s nailed her colours to the mast as someone who is entirely independent of political pressure.

Apart from the blame-shifting, this saga reveals another feature of the modern Labor Party. The ALP has always been far superior to the Coalition at making appointments that entrench its agenda beyond its term of office. Labor understands that maintaining political influence in between periods of governing comes from placing your loyal soldiers inside society’s major institutions. So, the smart people in Labor pay great attention to appointments that matter, devoting significant care and skill to the task. Who they appoint as ambassador (apologies, Kevin) is far less important than who they appoint to the Fair Work Commission – or the Reserve Bank of Australia. They have grown so accustomed to their appointments falling neatly in line that it must’ve come as a genuine shock when Bullock did what she is supposed to do – act entirely independently of government.

Wayne Swan

The conservatives, by contrast, govern largely to the rhythm of one step forward, two steps back, because they are so timid with appointments. Putting their economic, social and political agenda into action depends not only on them winning elections but on using their time in government to entrench their values. The Liberals are reasonably good at the first part, but when it comes to how they use the power of government to hire and fire people in major institutions, they’re woefully bad. They are not remotely strategic about it.

Labor’s appointments frequently pay lip service to meritocracy and bipartisanship, but even when this camouflage is at its most skilful, the intent to perpetuate an agenda beyond any term in office is clear. Picking Matt Kean as head of the Climate Change Authority was, for example, a stroke of pure genius.

What could be a more bipartisan appointment than a former treasurer in the Perrottet NSW Coalition government? To the world at large such a choice would seem the essence of meritocratic generosity. Only political tragics would know Kean is probably more ideologically extreme when it comes to climate policy than a good chunk of the federal ALP caucus.

Only close watchers of the NSW Liberal Party understand this appointment might be seen as a backhanded thankyou from the ALP to the bloke who, as a NSW Liberal moderate factional warlord, contributed significantly to the organisational catastrophe the moderates have gifted to their opponents.

Danielle Wood

Looking at the recent pronouncement by the CCA that Australians should eat less meat in the interests of reducing carbon emissions, it seems the Albanese government has chosen well.

Labor has not been so fortunate with some of its other appointments. The recent attacks on Bullock by the Treasurer and other agents of the government such as Swan probably reflect anger at her perceived disloyalty, as much as concern that she is frustrating the Treasurer’s political need to get lower interest rates to win an election.

While notionally, of course, the Treasurer could never have expected any quid pro quo, let alone assurances as to future economic policy by the RBA in return for appointing Bullock to the job, he no doubt oversaw the selection process with the ALP’s usual ideological diligence. Chalmers may have imagined the process was a repeat of Labor’s delicate selection minuet.

That’s the one where a new appointee doesn’t give any promises to Labor during the selection process, but equally they’re careful not to leave their political appointor with the impression they are, from an ALP point of view, ideologically unsound.

Perhaps the Albanese government imagined the selection of Danielle Wood as chair of the Productivity Commission followed this same choreography. Given Wood’s history of public commentary and research, the ALP clearly felt confident she would be a reliable and safe appointment.

To their great credit, both women have been prepared to be ungrateful to their appointors – and loyal to the country – by being independent of the government that appointed them. Bullock has been consistent and principled in her devotion to getting inflation back within the RBA’s target range – withstanding political pressure. Wood was courageous in publicly questioning the wisdom of the Albanese government’s attempt to pick winners with its Future Made in Australia Act.

Sam Mostyn

Five months after her appointment, Wood took aim at the high and entrenched costs of the government’s signature policy. “If we are supporting industries that don’t have a long-term competitive advantage, that can be an ongoing cost. It diverts resources, that’s workers and capital, away from other parts of the economy where they might generate high-value uses,” Wood said. “We risk creating a class of businesses that is reliant on government subsidies, and that can be very effective in coming back for more.”

Yet to be tested, and hopefully she never will be, is the Albanese government’s third prominent female choice, Sam Mostyn. There wasn’t much camouflage in her appointment as Governor-General – she’s a former ALP staffer and, these days, one wonders if her toughest choice when standing inside a ballot box is whether to vote Labor or Greens. The jury is still out on Mostyn. Historically, most governors-general never have to make politically sensitive decisions. So, it’s likely the worst that non-ALP voters will have to worry about from Mostyn will be a never-ending parade of wokery. Let’s hope so.

But when it comes to Bullock and Wood, I say: go girls.