Accountability for Monetary Policy
The Reserve Bank's conduct of monetary policy is explained publicly through several channels. The Bank makes a public announcement of any policy decision, giving detailed reasoning for it. Minutes of the monetary policy meetings of the Reserve Bank Board are published two weeks after each meeting. It publishes four Statements on Monetary Policy each year, which contain a detailed analysis of the economy and financial markets, and an account of the considerations for the policy stance adopted by the Bank. The Governor appears twice each year before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, to answer questions on the Bank's conduct of policy.
If the Reserve Bank supplies more exchange settlement funds than the commercial banks wish to hold, the banks will try to shed funds by lending more in the cash market, resulting in a tendency for the cash rate to fall. Conversely, if the Reserve Bank supplies less than banks wish to hold, they will respond by trying to borrow more in the cash market to build up their holdings of exchange settlement funds; in the process, they will bid up the cash rate. The actual level of the cash rate, which results from the Reserve Bank's market operations, as well as the target rate are shown in Graph 3.