RBA hands down progress report following 2022 independent review

Last Monday (15 December), the RBA handed down its progress report responding to recommendations made in a 2022 independent review.

The Board said it had addressed 41 of the 51 recommendations and had clear implementation plans for the rest. The RBA said this “multi-year transformation” spanned across its culture, governance, transparency and monetary policy decision-making frameworks.

“Given the breadth of our mandate, our transformation agenda is necessarily complex. It reaches into every part of the RBA, from how we make policy decisions to how we run critical infrastructure to serve the Australian public,” RBA governor Michele Bullock said.

“We have made substantial progress. We are more open and inclusive of diverse perspectives which challenge our decisions and processes.”

Since 2022, the RBA said it had implemented new internal processes to support decision-making, including longer but less frequent monetary policy meetings, deeper engagement with academia and think tanks and heightened transparency and public outreach.

In March 2025, the RBA also introduced a fresh governance structure with three overarching boards: the governance board, the monetary policy board and the payment systems board. It said this would strengthen decision-making, transparency, corporate oversight and risk governance.

The review also called for a cultural shift within the RBA towards a more open and dynamic culture, to be modelled by the leadership team. In response, the Reserve Bank implemented a broad swathe of changes including new feedback frameworks for senior managers, fresh leadership expectations and better performance processes.

The review also sparked legislative clarification into the RBA’s monetary policy mandates, being ‘price stability’ – taming inflation – and the maintenance of full employment. It clarified that the RBA’s overarching purpose was to promote economic welfare and prosperity for the Australian people, both now and into the future.

The RBA has also invested more into its communications department, and hosted a media conference after each monetary policy board meeting to explain the decision to the public. It has also opted to publish media statements following meetings, including an unattributed record of votes.

“Our efforts to communicate more plainly and more often have enabled information on the outlook for monetary policy to be accessible to a broader range of Australians,” the RBA noted.

The RBA also took steps to improve its capability to assess the impacts of climate change and the green transition.

As part of this, they onboarded new climate and energy specialists, deepened its ties with experts, and started to incorporate climate transition into their analysis of the economy and financial markets.

Finally, the review called for stronger use of research within the RBA to support monetary policy decision-making.

Key actions included developing a research agenda of longer-term priorities to support the monetary policy board, boosting external engagement with academia and think tanks, investing in skills by hiring from international PhD markets and translating research into policy-relevant insights.

Looking to the year ahead, the RBA said it planned to publish a framework for additional monetary policy tools and convene an external expert advisory group on monetary policy in 2026.

“Over time, a sustained investment in research capabilities and external engagement will help to embed a strong research culture and ground decision-making in robust frameworks that adapt to the evolving policy environment,” the RBA said.