Governor Bullock Spoke on Payments But Reiterated RBA’s Data Dependency

Governor Michele Bullock spoke to the AusPayNet Summit regarding “Modernising Australia’s Payments System”. She was asked a question on monetary policy though and said that Australia is not falling behind the rest of the world in the inflation fight and the RBA still believes that it can slow the economy enough to return inflation to target while preserving most of the employment gains. The RBA will continue to watch the data – emphasising its data dependency. Thus, the January 31 Q4 CPI data is key to the February decision.

• She discussed payments today and so her talk did not cover the monetary policy outlook. At the end though she said that it had been a hard year for many people and that hopefully next year will be better.
• She reiterated the RBA’s and government’s commitment to cash availability and making the system sustainable and resilient as it is still important to many and is used as a widespread backup and precautionary store of wealth.