The government should abandon any requirement for the Reserve Bank to have “gender or ethnic balance” on its board, a former senior staffer says – and there should be stronger assessment of its performance.
Geof Mortlock has made a submission to the finance and expenditure committee on its inquiry into banking competition. He was formerly a senior member of the Reserve Bank’s economics department. . .
Any diversity equity and identity requirements might have been the policy of the previous government, it is not for this one.
Mortlock said the Reserve Bank board needed to be “fundamentally strengthened in terms of the balance of knowledge, skills and experience required to perform its functions”.
“It currently lacks directors with the requisite level of knowledge and experience in financial sector regulatory and financial stability issues. It is poorly equipped to do its job effectively, as has been only too evident in reading Reserve Bank annual reports over many years.”
That is a damning indictment from a former staffer -the bank’s identity politics sabotaged its performance.
He said the government needed to rectify this “as a matter of urgency” by appointing directors with in-depth knowledge and experience in banking, insurance and financial stability issues.
“In doing so, the government should abandon the highly questionable approach of seeking gender and ethnic balance as the priority for board appointments. The only balance needed on any board is the required balance of skills, knowledge, experience, and judgement. Gender, ethnicity, and culture should always be subordinate to these fundamental matters.”
Merit, excellence and intelligence (MEI) must take precedence over diversity, equity and identity (DEI).
Mortlock also said there should be a strengthening of the assessment of the Reserve Bank’s performance against all its functions, including prudential and monetary policies.
“This is especially so given the high level of operational independence vested in the Reserve Bank. With such a degree of independence comes the compelling need for greater transparency and accountability.
“Independent performance assessment is crucial for this. Currently, there is little in the way of substantive performance reviews of the Reserve Bank senior management, board or monetary policy committee (MPC).
“Treasury should be given the responsibility and resourcing to review the performance of the Reserve Bank and its board, and the MPC … and to report to the minister of finance and Parliament annually on the results of the performance assessments.
“The assessments should be undertaken on the basis of comprehensive performance metrics that are specified by the minister in relation to the Reserve Bank’s full span of functions.” . . .
The Bank has a non-negotiable target to keep inflation within the one to three percent band.
That it spectacularly failed for three long years, causing immense economic and social damage is at least partly due to putting identity politics ahead of performance.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
A very important and highly relevant commentary Ele, but why stop at just applying MEI in the Reserve Bank? Every organisation in this benighted country needs the application of that principle. The Wellington City Council muppets are an excellent example of how DEI doesn't work.
DEI and identity political hiring damage everything they touch.
DEI make competent women targets when incompetent women get jobs and fail.
DEI hiring and indentity politics is not meritocracy in action and when the hire is based on indentity rather than competency again incompetents make competent hires who may fit an identity into targets.
Throw them both to the wind and hire people on their competent ability, experience and proficiency regardless of any other attribute.
Then regardless of gender, race, sexual preference you live or die on ability to actually do a job as prescribed and no one becoes a target because of their identity etc.
The last Government appointed an expert on Maori facial tattoos to the Reserve Bank governance board. There was clearly something very weird about the last Government.
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