Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Feed Items

The Bank today released the Reserve Bank Board’s Review of the Term Funding Facility.

Speech by Andrew Hauser, Deputy Governor, at the Business Journalism Awards.

Media release number 2024-19: The Reserve Bank of Australia today released the 2024 Assessment of the ASX Clearing and Settlement Facilities. This assesses the performance of the ASX CS Facilities against the Bank's Financial Stability Standards.

At its meeting today, the Board decided to leave the cash rate target unchanged at 4.35 per cent and the interest rate paid on Exchange Settlement balances unchanged at 4.25 per cent.

Occupational entry regulations (OER) are legal requirements that people need to meet to enter certain professions. They are intended to protect consumers by ensuring providers are of sufficient quality – but they can also create costs by making it harder for new workers to enter a profession or for new firms to open and grow. In this paper we construct a database of OER stringency across three states and a number of occupations to better understand these potential costs. We find that for services provided to consumers (businesses), OER tend to be more (less) stringent in Australia compared with the average OECD country. In most occupations OER are more stringent in Australia compared to the least stringent OECD country. We find that more stringent OER are associated with lower business entry and exit rates, and a slower flow of workers from less to more productive firms, both of which may have negative implications for productivity. We also find some tentative evidence that OER tend to be associated with skill shortages. These results do not necessarily suggest that OER should be less stringent. But they fill a gap in our understanding of the effects of OER, which can help policymakers going forward.

Speech by Brad Jones, Assistant Governor (Financial System), at the Intersekt Conference.