Some very good quotes from the head of financial stability at the RBA. First on house prices:
"What we’ve seen over the last six or seven years is that housing prices have, roughly speaking, tracked household incomes reasonably well. And that’s more or less what you’d 5 expect without major structural change of the kind that we saw in the 1980s and 1990s when you had deregulation and disinflation."
Second, on gender balance, where Ellis notes, as I did (for the first time in public, I believe), that the RBA has never had a female AG:
"Of course, you 5 know, I am an economist and it is a fairly male-dominated industry. My head of communications is probably going to kill me for this one but, actually, this sort of doesn’t bother me because, like, when I was six or seven, my dad’s idea of babysitting was to take me to his war-gaming club on a Saturday afternoon. And so I’m actually really used to being the only woman in a room full of slightly nerdy 10 very intelligent men, and so nothing’s really changed.
But, on a serious note...I think one of the things I really like about working at the Bank and admire about my colleagues is that it’s very much a merit-based organisation. Yes, there are no women at Assistant Governor level or above, but four of the 12 people at department head level, including me, are female. So, you know, sit back and wait; maybe something will change one day."
