Michele Bullock: who is the RBA’s first female governor?
She is the first woman to be appointed to lead the RBA since the central bank’s formation in 1960.
Michele Bullock has been appointed to lead the Reserve Bank for the next seven years from September 18 later this year.
She will be the first woman to lead the central bank since its formation 63 years ago.
In doing so, the cabinet did not reappoint current RBA governor, Philip Lowe, to the position.
Dr Lowe has been subject to heightened public scrutiny after the fast succession of interest rate rises to suppress high inflation rates. Dr Lowe stirred controversy when the central bank was hiking rates despite him having said as late as in 2021 – when interest rates were at a record low 0.1 per cent – that rates would not rise until 2024.
A plum, big money role
Most consider it unlikely that the change in leadership will dramatically alter the course of the bank’s monetary policy.
The governor of the Reserve Bank is a plum position – earlier this year, it was revealed Dr Lowe earned more than a million dollars a year and while he did not then have a mortgage, at one point was loaned part of his principal sum from the central bank itself.
Dr Lowe will now leave after seven years in the role. His appointment was announced by then Treasurer Scott Morrison in May 2016, under the second Turnbull government.
Dr Lowe, like his successor, served as the RBA’s deputy governor before landing the top job.
Long career
Ms Bullock has been at the Reserve Bank for nearly four decades and currently serves as its deputy governor. She was appointed to the role by the previous government in April 2022 and became the first woman to be deputy governor of the RBA.
She rose through the organisation after first joining as an analyst in 1985. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University of New England in 1984 and a Master’s of Science at the London School of Economics in 1989.