Josh Frydenberg refuses request for RBA deputy to speak on climate change

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, knocked back a request for the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, Guy Debelle, to address a meeting of state treasurers on climate change.

The federal treasurer knocked back a request for the Reserve Bank
of Australia’s deputy governor, Guy Debelle, to speak to a state
 treasurers’ meeting about how climate change could affect monetary policy.

The Queensland treasurer, Jackie Trad, wrote to Frydenberg in June asking for Debelle to talk to treasurers at the October meeting of the council of federal financial relations in Canberra on Friday about how climate change could affect monetary policy, inflation and economic growth.

Trad’s request was part of a push for a new “clean economy agreement” that would commit Australian governments to act together to meet targets set under the Paris climate agreement.

“As governments we have a responsibility to provide for the future,” Trad told Guardian Australia ahead of Friday’s meeting.

“That’s why it was so disappointing that Mr Frydenberg was unwilling to allow deputy RBA governor Guy Debelle to address the [council] on the way in which climate change could impact monetary policy, inflation and economic growth.”

Read the story from The Guardian by Sarah Martin - “Josh Frydenberg refuses request for RBA deputy to speak on climate change.”