Fireside Chat at the Melbourne University Faculty of Economics & Business Foundation Dinner

Fireside Chat

Notes

Fireside Chat at the Melbourne University Faculty of Economics & Business Foundation Dinner Michele Bullock Governor Melbourne University Faculty of Economics & Business Foundation Dinner 25 February 2026
– Melbourne
Audio 36.3MB Watch video: Fireside Chat with Michele Bullock, Governor, Melbourne University Faculty of Economics & Business Foundation Dinner, Melbourne Transcript Moderator Good evening, Michele. Hello, everybody. Governor, thanks for joining us tonight. We’re in the
beautiful Mural hall at the Gallery. I think you had a chance to see the exhibition before we
started. I think the obvious first question, what’s more important in economics? Is it art, the
human side of things, or science, the hard data? Michele Bullock That’s an interesting question. I would say that it is an art, I would say, but we like to try
to bring a bit of science to it as well. But as was alluded to, actually, it’s not easy.
Forecasting itself is not easy. It’s not a science. What you’re doing when you’re
forecasting and you’re modelling is you’re basically summarising the individual decisions
of millions of Australians and millions of people around the world, and you’re trying to put
them into single equations and it doesn’t work quite like that. It’s not a science like
that. So I do think there is probably a bit more art to it. Moderator Fair enough. We will come back to those millions of Australians making millions of decisions. But
maybe we could start with one of your big decisions that you made early on. You grew up in Melbourne
until you moved to Armidale. I think you were nine at the time. You’re now Australia’s top
economist and you’re graced us with your presence here. But it could have been so different. You
had a position at the University of New South Wales in medicine. What was the sliding doors moment
that brings you here rather than up in Parkville at one of our great hospitals? Michele Bullock So, yes, I did. I was born in Melbourne and I moved when I was about 8 or 9 to
Armidale. So I really am a country girl. And as Esdras talked about, I don’t think the region
and the country ever leaves you. I still consider myself that. But when I was in year 12, I was quite
young in year 12, I was only 17 and I’d been accepted to do medicine in Sydney and I
had never ever really been to Sydney. I had no experience of the city and I just didn’t. I
wasn’t sure, I just didn’t know. And so my dad, who worked at the uni, he arranged for me
to have a chat with a professor of economics at UNE, and I’d quite enjoyed economics at school,
but I hadn’t done quite as well as I thought I would in the HSC. And I thought, oh. And I spoke
to him and he said to me, actually, economics at university is completely different. And it turned
out it was. And so the sliding door moment really was, and I remembered my dad taking me out to lunch
and saying, have you made your decision? And I decided to stay in Armidale, go to UNE and do
economics. And the sliding door moment really was the conversation with Professor Treadgold, who put
me in a place where I thought, yes, this could be interesting and I could be good at this. Moderator Was it love at first sight with economics or more of a slow burn? Michele Bullock No, it was particularly when I was doing it at university. I think it was really love at first sight.
And the thing I loved about it was I was good at maths and I was absolutely ecstatic to find out in
first year uni that being good at maths was really good for economics. So I felt much more
comfortable working analytically and working mathematically, econometrics, those sorts of things,
than writing lengthy essays, which didn’t really suit me very much. So, yeah, that was a good
surprise. Moderator Do you ever wonder what sort of doctor you would have been? Michele Bullock Well, that’s another, actually another little tidbit there which also emphasised the sliding
door moment. I had a number of people come up to me and say, if you’ve been accepted to
medicine, you can’t possibly turn it down. And I got my back up a little bit about that. I
thought, that is the wrong attitude. You’ve got to think that you want to be a doctor and you
want to contribute and be good. You don’t do it just because you got a high mark. So I got quite
stroppy about it. And so what sort of doctor would I have been? I actually don’t know. I suspect
I might have ended up in research. Moderator Fair enough. Well, I’m a bit worried about the next questions now. You mentioned Esdras great
story and you’re a proud country person. What do you think that country background, what does it
bring to your current job? Michele Bullock I think a few things. I think a country, the country background and the background I grew up in, it
was a very wide group of people, people you had. I was just at the local public school, public high
school, and I had friends who had parents who were professors at the uni. I had friends whose parents
were truck drivers, I had friends whose parents were teachers. It was a very broad church of people.
And I thought, and I think what that has given me is an ability to actually talk to all sorts of
people in an authentic way. When I first came to Sydney, one of the things that sort of put me off a
little bit is when I’d meet new people, they’d say, what school did you go to? I’d say
Armidale High School. Oh, they didn’t know how to deal with that. But I think, you know, the
country background, the exposure to lots of different people with lots of different experiences, I
think has equipped me very well, not only as a leader, but also in dealing with millions of
stakeholders that I deal with. Moderator Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned Professor Treadgold as a sort of key person who put you on the path.
Were there other economic role models or inspirations or mentors that have been important along the
journey? Michele Bullock So when I went to London School of Economics, one of my professors there was Professor Charles
Goodhart, and he’d sort of had a deep interest in economics. He’d been with the Bank of
England, and I just loved being in his classes. He really inspired me to think about monetary policy.
And so on that side, I think there was that. On the professional side, there’s been a few key
mentors in my time and names you would recognise people like Glenn Stevens, people like Phil Lowe,
John Laker. So really fabulous men who, because during my time at the Bank, I have typically always
been the most senior woman and they were men who saw something in me and encouraged me and brought me
up. Moderator You mentioned you started the RBA in 1985, I think, as you were finishing your honours years. We
heard it a little bit before about the importance of internships, and that’s how you started
there. When did you get the sense that the RBA was a place that not only you wanted to work, but
you’ve never left? Michele Bullock So I always wanted to do public policy. I wanted to sort of give back and I wanted to do something
for Australia, and I had some various opportunities. So when I first started there. Let me tell you
the story of someone who’s in this audience, Ian Harper, wherever he is. Ian Harper interviewed
me for a job at the Bank and he interviewed me for the internship. And I reckon I got one out of
every three questions. Every two questions I had to say, I don’t know. And I walked out of the
interview and I said to one of my fellow students who’d come down from Armidale for interviews
with me, I said, I’m not getting a job at the Bank, that’s for sure. So you can imagine my
surprise when, in fact, they did hire me, they did offer me an internship and I was very pleased. I
was pleased because the RBA at the time, they just floated the … When I was an intern, they
just floated the Australian dollar. And that was the first sort of step towards among a number of
steps, deregulation of interest rates, all those things that started to give the Reserve Bank some
independence in its policy. So being there during that time was really inspiring for me to see that
things were moving in that direction. So that was, I think, through those first few years and getting
a scholarship from the Bank to go to London School of Economics to study further was the other thing.
And that’s really what bonded me to the institution. Moderator It was. It’s very unusual, though. There wouldn’t be many people in this room who’ve
stayed with the same employer for 41 years. I think you’re in your 41st year this year.
Has there been moments when you’ve thought, oh, I wonder if the grass is green on the other
side? There’s a few investment bank tables here. They’ve got great offices, good perks,
business class travel. Have you ever been tempted? Michele Bullock Yes, I have. I, a number of occasions I did think about the possibility of moving and I did, in fact,
do some interviews. In the end, though, it came down to me, it came down to what was I looking for in
terms of service and did I want to have a job that made profits, lots of profits, for a financial
institution, or did I want to do something which was for the Australian public? And that is
what’s kept me there. The other thing that’s kept me at the Bank is that even though most
people just think of the Reserve Bank of setting interest rates, it is a very diverse institution.
It’s a bit like a conglomerate. It’s got a banking. It’s got payment systems,
it’s got printing banknotes, it’s got payments oversight. And I’ve been so fortunate
that I have had so many different moves into different areas that I haven’t had a career
that’s very sort of in a tunnel. I’ve really moved around a lot and I think that’s
been, so I’ve not got bored. Moderator Conglomerates are great for demergers. There’s a few investment bankers and lawyers who’d
like to talk to you later. There is a challenge there, though, that obviously you’ve got deep
respect for the traditions and the philosophy, the history of the place and its role. But you’ve
also got to be able to push back and I guess be willing to challenge the institution and change the
institution. How do you sort of get that right in your head and then put it into action? Has that
been difficult ever? Michele Bullock No, I don’t think it has been difficult. I know that a number of people suggested that I was an
insider and therefore I couldn’t transform the institution. I don’t think that’s the
case at all because I knew what I thought had to change in the institution. And there were a couple
of things that we needed to do better at. And one was internal challenge and debate. We needed to do
that better. We did some of it, but we needed to do more of it. We needed to do it better. And the
other thing was we needed to engage externally better. We were doing, again, we were doing some of
that, but we needed, I think, to engage much more actively with external debate. Because I don’t
want people to accuse us as being in a bubble. So we have a lot of things we do. We have a business
liaison program which helps us with that. But I also wanted, and we’re doing this now, I want
the teams to be engaging with external researchers, with external economists, debating issues with
them. We don’t necessarily know all the answers. So it’s good to have challenge and debate.
And so I think that I had a good sense of that because I was an insider. Moderator Are you feeling it start to change from that perspective? Michele Bullock Yes, I think it is starting to change. I sense certainly internally that there is much more
willingness for staff, including more junior staff, to put a different point of view, to challenge
what might be the status quo. And I also think there’s been some really good examples where our
analysts and our researchers are going out and they’re picking up ideas and they’re not
dismissing them. So a very good example I think of this is the debate that’s been going on for
some time about the NAIRU, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. We had some views
about it, we had models, but others external to the Bank had different views. And my teams, our
teams, they got out there and they tried to understand those points of view and they really engaged
with the debate. And I think that’s been a really important example. Moderator Is it difficult though? I mean, often everyone thinks they can be a journalist and I imagine
sometimes everyone thinks they can run the RBA. How do you sort through the important bits of
challenge, the less important bits of challenge? Do you feel that process is rigorous enough or
rigorous? Michele Bullock I think it is reasonably rigorous. I mean, the fact is that there are lots of people out there who
absolutely know with absolute certainty what we should be doing. And I never really have that degree
of certainty. I’m always a little bit doubtful. But you’re right, there’s people out
there who do have very firm views. We engage with those views, we debate those views, we turn them
over internally. And I think, you know, people would expect us to, quite frankly, the public, we are
making decisions as an independent central bank. We are not elected officials. But we need to be
accountable to the public and we need to make sure that we have turned over the rocks. So I think
it’s important that we engage as much as we can with that. Moderator There is still, though, I feel sort of mystique around the RBA, you know, big granite headquarters,
imposing, not quite sure what goes on behind closed doors. You know, is there plush carpets or secret
lunchrooms or whatever it is, you can let us know about that. But sometimes I think that mystique is
probably a bit useful, too. Is there a balance there to be struck? Michele Bullock Well, the trend recently with all central banks, I think, has been to do away with mystique and try
and be much more transparent, try to make it much clearer what our reaction functions are so people
understand what we’re reacting to. No mystique about the building. It’s just a big building
fiddled with asbestos at the moment. But I think it’s. No, I think mystique is the wrong sort of
thing. I think respect. I think what I want, what I would really like is I would like people to be
able to say, I don’t necessarily agree with what they’re saying, but I understand why
they’re saying it and I trust that they have done the work they need to understand it. Because
economics is about judgments. Reasonable people can differ on different, as we see every day in the
media. So for me, it’s much more important that rather than be mysterious and so on, that people
can say, well, look, I don’t agree, but I do understand how you got there and you’ve done a
good job of explaining it to me. Moderator Donald Trump’s got some very firm ideas on central bank renovations, too, if you want to run
that past him. One of the big changes that you’ve had versus your predecessors is, of course,
that we get to see you every six weeks or so following the RBA board meeting. How have you enjoyed
that process? Michele Bullock I wouldn’t have used the word enjoy. Moderator It looks like you’re enjoying it sometimes. Michele Bullock Sometimes, maybe, it depends a little bit. Look, when I first started, I was quite uncomfortable with
it, and I’ve got a little more comfortable with it. And it’s not something that I would say
I enjoy doing, but I also accept that I do need to do it. And as I said earlier, it’s related to
the fact that we are an independent central bank, we are setting interest rates to achieve our goals
of price stability and full employment. And I do think we need to be accountable and people need to
see me stand up there and explain myself. So I think it needs to be done. And some people are really
good at standing up in front of media and others are not so good. And I just do my best. Moderator Do you think it makes the RBA better, that process? Michele Bullock Yeah, I think it does. And one of the things we’ve been trying to do. So one of the things out
of the review of the RBA, one of a number of things, but one was a point about communication, how we
weren’t communicating very well and we sort of had some relationships with media outlets and we
talked to analysts and so on, but I think there was a feeling that we weren’t explaining
ourselves to the Australian public very well. And the way I think about it when I’m talking is I
think about, what if I was explaining this to my mum, how would I explain it to my mum and my
mum’s friends? And so sometimes I hear people say, oh, yeah, but the analysts and the traders,
you know, you don’t say anything particularly interesting. And to which my response is, I’m
actually not talking to them, I’m talking to the Australian public through the media, through
the press conference. And I think it does make it better. And recently, with our new communications
team, we are starting to do surveys of people and we’re identifying groups of people that are
not as economically literate as others. And one thing that comes through in these surveys is that
they admit they’re not really economically literate. They don’t understand it, but they
want to understand it. So we’ve got to find ways of explaining things to them. And again, it
comes back to that point I made earlier. They may not agree, they may not like it, but at least they
will understand where we’re coming from. Moderator There’s always a danger, as Governor Lowe found out of overcommunicating. Is that towards the
forefront of your mind as well? Michele Bullock Yes, it is. And let me just say up front that I thought it was very unfair the way he was
represented. What it did demonstrate to me was that it’s very difficult to get across a message
with qualifications. So you can qualify something as much as you like, but people will zero in on a
little tiny bit of it. So there was all these qualifications and about interest rates won’t go
up until 2024, but no one listened to any of the qualifications, and they just heard, won’t go
up until 2024. So for me, the lesson was that you’ve got to be quite careful in what you say
because people leave out the qualifications. And that’s a challenge for economists, because
we’ve got lots of qualifications. Moderator Yeah. And I guess I’m feeling a little bit certain, seen as a member of the media, that we tend
to focus in on the one thing as well. But I guess it does go back to what you just said, that the
person at home, your mum and your mum’s friends, they’re trying to wrap their heads around
it too, and the qualifications can be tough to get, be tough to get your head around. Michele Bullock Yeah, it is. And so I think one of the things that my communications team talk about a lot now, so we
had some communication, we were quite tactical with communications. We’re trying to be much more
strategic with our communication now, identifying areas where we need to communicate more, we need to
change our message, we have different layering of communications, some more technical for those who
can deal with it, others simpler. So that’s the sort of way we’re trying to approach it.
And the thing that the communications team keep telling me is, you can never say certain things, you
just have to keep repeating yourself. So a really good example is that there is a misconception,
which is held by quite a few people, that lower inflation means prices will fall. And so getting this
message out, which I’ve been trying to get out and I’ve been repeating and repeating, is
we’re lowering inflation, but prices are not falling. It just means they aren’t rising as
quickly anymore. And this is. You may all think that’s really obvious, but for some people, that
is quite a subtle message and they don’t quite get it. So these are the sorts of things that
we’re trying harder to double down on. Moderator Governor, you mentioned earlier that for most of your time at the RBA, you’ve been the most
senior woman in the place. We’ve now got several senior female leaders across the federal scene.
Head of the Productivity Commission, chair of the ACCC, Secretary of the Treasury, the incoming head
of ASIC. Does this feel like a moment or does it just feel like the way it should be anyway? Michele Bullock Well, I think it is an important moment and I also think it’s good that we’re seeing women
rise to take on these positions, because as we talked about, I’ve talked about in another fora,
it is good for young women coming through studying economics to see that there are senior women in
economics. And I actually spoke in Geelong today. I spoke for about 700 school students,
about 250 in a room and then some online. And a lot of them were boys. But there was, I was
quite surprised that there were quite a few girls there as well. And so I think it’s really
important that. And I came to this idea, I’d have to say probably a little bit late, because
when I first started work, I’d been sort of brought up, my parents brought me up to not actually
think there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. So I never had this feeling that just because I
was a woman, I couldn’t do certain things. It only became a little bit obvious to me as I got
through my career that that maybe wasn’t what everyone thought. So I do think it’s
important that I get out there and I support young women coming up through the ranks. And I think it
helps that you can see women in senior positions now. Moderator When you see the, you know, when you talk to groups of school kids and when you look at the
RBA’s own intern intake, is there enough future Michele Bullocks coming through the ranks, the
ones who get past the job interview of course? Michele Bullock Yes, of course. Look, I think there are. But some of you would know that we’ve been doing quite
a bit of work. We have a public education team who are working really hard to get just more students
into economics full stop. And there is a tendency for economics to be mainly boys, mainly from
private schools. So I actually don’t even think my old school offers economics anymore, my
public school. So there’s a tendency for economics to be sort of studied at school and we find
that that has a flow onto university. It doesn’t have to, but it tends to. So we are working
really hard to try and work with the curriculum and try and get more girls, more people from a range
of different diverse backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, and also from different socioeconomic areas
into economics because we need that diversity. Moderator It speaks to the work that the Melbourne Foundation is doing. You mentioned the importance, the
formative moments in your early career where central banks, the RBA’s independence was being
established. I guess central bank independence is a pretty hot topic at the moment. Have you, do you
know Kevin Walsh at all? Have you had much to do with him? Michele Bullock No, I don’t know Kevin. I haven’t met him. I will soon enough, I think. But he had a good
relationship with Glenn Stevens through the global financial crisis. So he was on the Fed board at
the time times. So, you know, he’s known to us. And typically we do have good relations with the
Federal Reserve governors. Moderator And can you just give us a bit of an insight into it? What does that cooperation do for the two
central banks? Is it, you know, just another way of tapping some more ideas or is it a bit more
developed than that? Michele Bullock No it’s, when we meet, I think people feel quite free to share their thoughts so we can get good
information from other central banks about what they’re seeing in the economy, their economies,
the world economy. And of course, being a small open economy, that’s really important for us,
what’s going on in the world. So it’s a great opportunity to hear frankly and without any
sort of holding back what they are seeing and we can give the same to them. And, and I also think
quite frankly, it’s a little bit like a support network when things aren’t going well here. Moderator Yeah, Jay Powell looks like he enjoys his press conferences too. Just to come back to that idea of,
that broader idea of central bank independence, I mean, clearly for you it’s a bedrock of
monetary policy. Do you sense threats to it at home or abroad? Michele Bullock No, I don’t think I do. And we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out in the
United States. But so far I would have to say that the chair, Jay Powell, has stood very calmly and
kept his eyes focused on what he needs to be focused on. And that’s a sign of independence. I
think it’s reasonably well established now that having a model where central banks are
independent to achieve their goals, which usually always involves inflation and sometimes involves
some other things like unemployment for us and the Fed has also got unemployment there as well. But
as I said earlier, with accountability, that means that we can pursue those because low and stable
inflation is just so important for the functioning of the economy. And I think that’s been
established over the inflation targeting period that the way central banks have managed to keep
inflation low and stable has been very important for keeping economies, there’s always outside
shocks like the GFC and the pandemic of course, but keeping focused on low and stable inflation, I
think has been, with independence, has been critical to steadying the ship. Moderator There’s an awful lot going on in the world and you’re probably like you wake up every
morning and something else has happened in some other part of the world and then lots of stuff going
on locally. If we were to get another shock is that when the independence is going to be really the
value of it is going to be particularly proven? Michele Bullock Possibly. I think often in crises, what you find is that the independence of all the institutions
comes to the fore. I remember during Covid and I wasn’t so involved in the GFC, but similar when
there are big shocks and it’s impacting everyone, everyone tends to come together. And it’s
the central banks come together, it’s the regulators in the domestic economy come together. So,
you know, Covid, the government, the regulators, banks, everyone came together. What can we do? So I
think it’s not that we don’t have independence, but I think we use it in a slightly
different way when there’s a crisis and we come together. Moderator Does the world feel like a shock is possible? Michele Bullock I think anything’s possible. The markets seem remarkably sanguine about things, I have to say at
the moment. But it does seem that every time we think something really, really bad is going to
happen, so the first sort of tariffs, for example, they get wound back. There was a period there
where Greenland looked a little dodgy, but then it got wound back. So I think everyone’s
nervous. I don’t think people and markets know quite how to price some of the tail risks here,
but it is a bit of you wake up and you look and see what happened overnight and does it have any
implications. At the moment, from my perspective, we just have to sort of take that as given and we
have to focus on where the issues are at the moment, which I think is domestically for us. Moderator Alright, well, let’s come to that. It’s been three weeks since the RBA Board decided to
raise interest rates by 0.25 per cent. Tom, you’re very much focused on this
idea of the balance of risks between the two sides of your mandate, inflation and employment.
We’ve had a couple of bits of data on both of those sides of the mandate. Labour, jobs data last
week, a monthly inflation number this week. I know the monthly inflation number can be very noisy and
the RBA is still wrapping its head around that to some extent. But can you give us a bit of an
insight into how you’re seeing those risks develop? Michele Bullock Yes. So it’s probably worth just going back briefly and going back to sort of the middle of the
year, sort of. We’d been lowering interest rates because basically demand was not growing very
strongly. We had inflation coming down. We were hearing from our liaison program that the labour
market was sort of softening a bit. People were finding it easier to get labour. So there was signs
that things were heading in the right direction. And then you had the world economy, which was sort
of everyone was predicting the world economy was going down the tube, basically. And then sort of in
the middle of the year, sort of from September on, we’d lowered interest rates a third time in
August. Then from the middle of the year, things just started to look a bit better. Credit was
recovering strongly, housing prices were rising, demand was recovering more than expected. Inflation
started to pick up, the world economy was looking now actually better than it had and forecasts were
being revised up, so everything was pointing in the opposite direction. So all the risks were
shifting that way. And I think there was a recognition in February that inflation was now too high
and the forecasts were that it wasn’t going to come back into target very soon without some
action on financial conditions. So that’s sort of where we found ourselves, I think the risks
more on the upside, as you say, and I think the correct response at that point was to react as the
Board did. Moderator And at the moment, are you, in a way in the data gathering phase to try and figure out how the
balance is going to shift now? Michele Bullock We’re always in that. Now, the comment earlier about you’re driving blind with a driver
directing you staring at the rear-view mirror, that’s. It’s a funny analogy, but I also
like to emphasise to people that, yes, we know the data that we’re getting is from the past. At
the very least it might be current data, like liaison data and so on, but that’s our starting
point. And then we have to use what we know about historical relationships, our models, those sorts
of things, to think what does it imply going forward? So we’re not backward looking, we are
trying to be forward looking, but forecasting is inherently difficult. We have to do it, we do our
best, but the data, when we say we’re data driven, it’s not to say we’re reacting to
individual bits of data that happened in the past, it’s to use those data to cast forward. And
what does that mean? And therefore, how should we react? Moderator Will we, us in this room and millions of Australians, will we need to be a bit patient while that
sort of, while we find our way through that fog? Michele Bullock I think we will have to be patient. I think we’re in a situation where. Let me go back a step.
When we were coming out of COVID and inflation was heading up to 8 per cent and
interest rates were zero, there was no doubt what we had to do. We had to raise interest rates and we
had to raise them quickly and they had to be a fair bit higher. Now we’re in a situation where
the labour market we think is a little bit tight, inflation is a bit elevated. I don’t think we
think it’s taking off again, but it’s a little bit elevated. We thought we were sort, the
economy was sort of in balance, maybe it’s a little tighter than we thought. So we’re sort
of in this position where it’s actually quite a good position where the economy is sort of
recovering and this is where it’s difficult. So the judgments are a little bit more difficult.
It’s not like we’ve got a situation where it’s very clear what we have to do.
We’ve got ourselves to a position now where it’s close to balance, maybe a little bit
tight. And that’s why people have to be patient. Moderator And just when you think about that change that you described from February, from the middle of last
year to February, are you and people in the Bank thinking, gee, that moved quickly. Do we need to
think about whether, you know, cycles are speeding up or there’s a change in what we, you know,
the usual models that we rely on? Michele Bullock Yeah, well, we have been thinking about that and we have been thinking about what our models are to
telling us, what our surveys are telling us, what our liaison is telling us. And we have changed our
view a bit on the extent of excess demand in the economy. We thought we were pretty close to balance,
but the evidence is coming out suggesting, no, actually we’ve got to rethink our forecast again,
our models here. Are they giving us. So it’s very difficult to know whether or not you’ve
got the labour market in balance or whether or not you’ve got excess demand when you’re
close. As I said, if you’re one direction or the other a long way, it’s very obvious, but
at the moment it’s not so obvious. So we are thinking about that. Moderator Well, the backseat driving will continue, I’m sure. Governor, before we wrap up, I’m going
to personalise this a little bit. I’ve got a 17-year-old son, he’s studying economics at
high school. He actually quite enjoys it. I said, oh, it’s pretty hard. And he said, oh, dad,
it’s just supply and demand, mate. Michele Bullock It is. Moderator But I’m trying to say to him, look, economics, that’s a great thing to be thinking about.
Can you make the pitch to him and lots of other high school kids? Why is a career in economics still
really important? Michele Bullock So it’s important for a number of reasons. It’s important because the economy impacts
everyone, it impacts all our lives. And actually, whether or not you are an economist doing work in
the public service or in a bank or there’s lots of other branches of economics as well. You
know, health economics, for example. So whether you’re doing that or you’re just doing your
everyday life, you are making economic choices all the time. You know, I think the first thing I got
taught in year 11, economics was, apart from supply and demand, was economics is the study of
unlimited wants and limited means. It’s all about how we decide to divide up pies, how we decide
to grow the pie. And so it’s really relevant to all sorts of decisions we’re making in our
lives. Speaking of children, my son never did any economics. He always sort of did science. He ended
up in health. And during COVID when he was allowed to visit, during, you know, when we weren’t
in lockdown, he was sitting on the couch one night and he said, said to me, he was talking to me
about the economy and what’s going on. And he’d been reading a lot about Alan Greenspan for
some reason, I don’t know why, and he said to me, you know, Mum, economics should be compulsory,
he said, because it’s so relevant to everything. He’s reading the papers, he wants to
understand why things are happening. And it’s also relevant in his own life, in terms of his
earnings, his superannuation, his investment decisions, all these sorts of things. So, you know, if
you can turn him around, then hopefully we can turn your son around too. Moderator Absolutely. Well, I have unlimited questions, but we have limited time. Ladies and gentlemen, will
you please thank Governor Bullock for being so generous with hers.