Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Can we trust another word out of Neil Quigley's mouth?

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

I don't enjoy saying what I'm about to say because personally I quite like Neil Quigley, but I think that he needs to quit as the chair of the Reserve Bank - simply because I do not think that we can ever trust a single word that comes out of that man's mouth again as the chair.

He has been busted telling not just one, but quite a lot of fibs about Adrian Orr's resignation.

So for a start, on the day that Adrian Orr quit, you'll recall Neil Quigley was the one who held the press conference. At the time he said Adrian's resignation was a personal decision. That is clearly not true.

Adrian, we now find out, packed a sad, and quit over funding.

Neil Quigley also said that there was nothing that the Government had said in the days before that that caused Adrian to quit. Not true. Adrian and Nicola, and actually Neil himself, had a meeting about the funding 9 days before the resignation.

Neil Quigley was also asked whether there were any policy conduct or performance issues which are at the centre of this resignation. He said there are no issues of that type that are behind this resignation.

Once again, not true. He was asked what happened because: "Reserve Bank governors don't just up and resign" and he said: "There is a time when you think having achieved what you wanted to achieve, that's enough".

Once again, not true. That's not why Adrian quit. Adrian quit because he packed a tantrum because he didn't get enough money.

Now, I do not know why Neil Quigley decided that he needed to tell porkies in order to defend Adrian Orr. I mean, I get the feeling that he has spent a great deal of his time, unfortunately for him, trying to manage the tantrums of our former toddler governor, and perhaps he just got into a little bit of a pattern of butt covering for the guy.

He has suggested that he was constrained in what he could say by Orr's exit agreement. But in that case, you simply say, look, I can't say much because it's an employment agreement.

And I think we all will understand that because we're all employees or employers, and we're all constrained by the same law, so we get it. But he didn't choose to do that, did he?

He chose to stand there and fib to us, and that means that next time he's up answering some tough questions, I don't know if we're going to trust him, are we? Already, unfortunately for Neil, he's got quite a big black mark against him.

He was part of the money printing team with Adrian Orr that stuffed up the economy, and some already think that that is enough reason to call for him to quit. Never mind the fact that he has now been busted telling straight out porkies in public.

So if I was Neil Quigley, he's got two options. He can hang in there and see how it goes, or he can quit while he's still ahead - and I would do the latter.

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