{"id":7591,"date":"2025-09-07T08:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T08:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/7591\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T08:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T08:06:09","slug":"can-we-trust-the-reserve-bank-former-chairperson-on-orr-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/7591\/","title":{"rendered":"Can we trust the Reserve Bank? Former chairperson on Orr crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Reserve Bank chairperson says he doesn’t think there will be long-term damage to trust in the central bank over its handling of Adrian Orr’s departure.<\/p>\n

Arthur Grimes told Q+A there were short-term concerns about its reputation and he believed the central bank had made some “misleading” statements. <\/p>\n

“Probably the top of the list [of the RBNZ\u2019s priorities] was to ensure privacy,” Grimes said.<\/p>\n

“But having said that, it was important not to say something that could potentially mislead, and I think some of the statements were misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further revelations, reported by The Spinoff<\/a>, show the bank didn’t publicly disclose a board meeting around the time it was disputing its funding with the Government.<\/p>\n

A governor and a chairman of the board have departed, and the Government admits being unhappy about the RBNZ\u2019s actions.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Former Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr resigned in March, followed by chairperson Neil Quigley late last month. <\/p>\n

The circumstances around Orr\u2019s departure remained unclear for months. When his decision was announced on March 5, little reason was provided beyond that it was his “personal decision”.<\/p>\n

Subsequent Official Information Act (OIA) responses<\/a> and a direction from the Chief Ombudsman to release more information attributed Orr\u2019s resignation to a disagreement with Finance Minister Nicola Willis and the RBNZ\u2019s board over the central bank’s funding. <\/p>\n

\"Reserve<\/p>\n

Reserve Bank (file image). (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Quigley said in June<\/a> he regretted not releasing information on Orr\u2019s resignation sooner. <\/p>\n

“As well as our obligations under the OIA, we needed to take into careful consideration the former Governor\u2019s exit agreement and privacy law,\u201d he said at the time. <\/p>\n

Grimes said the Reserve Bank \u201chas always been a very respected organisation that has taken a low-key role and tried to keep out of the media in this sort of way\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the Reserve Bank could have been more straightforward and transparent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a short-term problem for the Reserve Bank, but we’ve seen the governor go, we’ve seen the chairman of the board go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect there’ll be some good replacements for those people coming up soon, and I don’t think there’ll be any long-term damage for the Reserve Bank out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grimes said it was “hugely important” that the bank remained an independent institution. <\/p>\n

The Finance Minister said earlier this week she had been as “upfront and transparent” as possible about Orr. Willis told RNZ<\/a> she didn\u2019t have all the details of the employment dispute between Orr and the Reserve Bank. <\/p>\n

Willis added she was \u201cunhappy\u201d about the Reserve Bank\u2019s communication to the public and that she expected them to be \u201cas publicly accountable and transparent as possible”. <\/p>\n

For the full story, watch the video above<\/p>\n

Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Reserve Bank chairperson says he doesn’t think there will be long-term damage to trust in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[219,42,43,135,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-7591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-economy","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}