The Squiz 

Moves to reform the Reserve Bank’s structure have been derailed with the Coalition pulling support from the Albanese Government’s plan. This blew up yesterday, meaning the biggest overhaul of the Reserve Bank in a generation would likely need support from the Greens after the Coalition ended months of negotiations over the creation of an interest rate committee with a separate governance board to run everything else. Treasurer Jim Chalmers – who was hoping for bipartisan support – said the Coalition was being “irresponsible” and putting “politics before economics”. But the Coalition’s Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor said it was the Albanese Government playing politics “having spent the last week or so out there bagging the Reserve Bank”. 

Back it up a bit…

Chalmers commissioned a review of the Reserve Bank, and the final report was delivered in March last year featuring 10 key recommendations, including splitting the central bank’s board (which is made up of officials, experts and business people). The reason to do that is the review found under its current structure, the board struggles to oversee the institution’s operation, the money supply and interest rate settings. As we’ve talked about a lot of late, the Reserve Bank is critical in the nation’s management of inflation, so there’s been a lot of chat about how the changes would work. Yesterday, Taylor said the Coalition wasn’t satisfied that Chalmers has got it right – but Chalmers says something’s happened within the Coalition because he and Taylor were chatting recently about board appointments for the new structure.

Anything else?

Yep… Coalition leader Peter Dutton will announce today he wants to fast-track hundreds of mining and energy projects, telling the sector he’ll be “the best friend you ever had”. In a speech to the Minerals Council of Australia conference, he’s expected to say he’ll “turbocharge” projects in order to meet demand. It comes as the Albanese Government has copped criticism from the sector for industrial relations reforms. Expect to hear more about that today… Also likely to be back on the agenda is the government’s plan to introduce legislation by the end of the year to ban children under a certain age (likely to be between 14-16yo) from using social media. Here’s an explainer of how it would work.