1 Introduction
Views about the appropriate role for monetary
policy, and the appropriate legal relationship between
the government and the Reserve Bank, have evolved
considerably since the Reserve Bank’s inception in 1934.
In this article we outline the evolution of the legislative
objectives for monetary policy in New Zealand and
the changing nature of the Reserve Bank’s statutory
responsibility for monetary policy.
The statutory objectives governing monetary policy and
the Reserve Bank’s independence have been repeatedly
modified since the 1930s. These provisions have been
influenced by differing domestic political emphases and by
the evolution of economic thought about what monetary
policy can usefully achieve. The current form of the
legislative provisions governing monetary policy was also
extensively influenced by the rethinking of wider public
sector governance in New Zealand in the late 1980s.
Although New Zealand’s approach to monetary policy has
evolved in much the same way as in other countries, many
of the details of our framework have retained a distinctly
New Zealand flavour.
At inception, the purpose of the Reserve Bank was
to manage money and credit conditions to promote New
Zealand’s economic welfare. An integral part of this was
the requirement that the Reserve Bank maintain the New
Zealand pound’s convertibility into the British pound. In
subsequent amendments and acts between 1936 and
1964, the number and scope of monetary objectives
expanded – variously encompassing economic and
social welfare, production, trade, employment, and price
stability, though not necessarily in that order. Eventually,
with the floating of the New Zealand dollar in 1985 and
the passage of the Reserve Bank Act 1989, the primary
objective of monetary policy settled on domestic price
stability,2
under the implicit, oft-repeated, understanding
that monetary policy pursuing price stability provided the
best possible contribution to the economic welfare of New
Zealand.
The legal independence of the Reserve Bank in
respect of monetary policy has also been amended over
its history. The Bank was granted a high degree of formal
independence under the inaugural Reserve Bank Act of
1933, but this independence was substantially removed
later in the 1930s and in other subsequent amendments
to the Reserve Bank Act. The 1989 Act put in place a
balanced arrangement in which the Reserve Bank has
full operational autonomy in the conduct of monetary
policy, while the Minister of Finance has considerable
(transparent) involvement in agreeing how price stability
should be pursued, and some reserve powers of