Spencer appointment still appears unlawful

croaking cassandra

Just a couple of days after the election, Graeme Wheeler’s term as Governor of the Reserve Bank expires and Wheeler will leave office.

In the normal course of events, a new appointment of a permanent Governor would long since have been made.   But as officials belatedly realised late last year, and as the Reserve Bank Board had eventually to be directed to recognise, a new permanent appointment of someone to take office in late September could not be made in the run-up to the election, without breaching the conventions that govern how the period around elections is handled.

I’d been drawing attention to the issue for 18 months or so, and had suggested that the practical solution would have been to have invited Wheeler to accept a short extension of his term, allowing whoever formed the new government after the election to make their own appointment.  We don’t know…

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