Philip Lowe: The Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian economy

Address by Mr Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, to the CPA Australia Riverina Forum, Wagga Wagga, 16 December 2021.

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

I would like to thank the CPA for inviting me to your Riverina Forum. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to join you here in Wagga Wagga, where I grew up.

I had the good fortune of attending Sacred Heart Primary School in Kooringal, St Michael's and then Trinity Senior High School. It was at Trinity, though, where I first became interested in economics. And that was thanks to an inspiring teacher, Mrs King. In her classroom she explained how economics could be used to address the world's problems and how the right combination of the invisible hand of the market and government regulation could maximise the welfare of our society. I remember being struck by these powerful ideas and they have stayed with me through the years.

In Wagga, I also learnt the value of hard work and the challenges of running a small business. During my high school years, my father had a petrol station and auto accessories shop at the bottom of Fitzmaurice St. It was an old-style, full service petrol station and I spent many hours on cold winter mornings and hot summer afternoons pumping petrol. The valuable life lessons I learnt there complemented those that I learnt in the classroom.