Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor unveils some new details surrounding Adrian Orr's resignation

The Reserve Bank wasn’t planning to announce former governor Adrian Orr’s resignation until after it had hosted a big international conference.

But the unexplained resignation was brought forward by five days to March 5 - the day before the conference, new documents reveal. 

NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brian Bred back to the juicy details around Adriannall's resignation.
Jane to Pshriny is The Herald's Wellington business editor. She's
been looking into this. Janee, good evening, Hi Ryan, it's
so best Oia. You've got back in a week while
what's what's the gist.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Was a pretty juicy day for me. We got some
documents back from Nikola Willis's office. They showed a couple
of things. Firstly, they showed that Adrian the Reserve Bank
had planned to announce Adrianall's resignation on March ten. That
would have been after the Reserve Bank hosted a massive
conference with international economists from around the world, but that

(00:39):
announcement actually ended up being made on March five, the
day before the conference. So I remember on March five,
it was all a scramble. The Reserve Bank ended up
calling a press conference late in the day and this
was all happening as economists were arriving in New Zealand
from around the world ready for this big conference the
following day to mark thirty five years of inflation targeting.

(01:03):
So what we don't know is why was that announcement
brought forward? And you know what prompted that, because it's
pretty embarrassing for New Zealand to host a big conference
and for the big news of the day to be
the governor of the Reserve Bank has just resigned. So
that was one little nugget. The other one was that

(01:25):
the documents show that Nicola Willis's press secretary prepped her
and said, look, here's a list of questions that journalists
might ask you about Aw's resignation. A couple of the
questions the Press sect said might be asked were around
meetings that Nicola Willis had with ad Renal. Specifically, a
question he said media might ask is, did or raise

(01:49):
his voice with you? And were their disagreements with you?
So we don't know if a meeting that happened before
he resigned, you know how feisty it was, whether people
raise their voices or not. But the fact that the
Press Sects has prepared Nichola Willis for questions around that,
you know, it tells us somewhat juicy and interesting story.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, it's it is interesting because it's not like and
we can't say whether Adrian all raised his voice in
that meaning because we were there and clearly Nichola Willis
is not telling us, but you would ask the question,
do the pre sects prepare for every meeting that the
minister has? Do they say, Hey, someone might ask you
where the voices were raised? You know what I mean?

(02:32):
You can kind of make your own inference. I suppose,
can't you.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, that's the thing, and you know we did ask
Nichola Willis at the time. I asked, actually was Adrian
or sick? And I asked was the misconduct involved? So
that these were fair questions that we did ask. My
biggest sort of my guess as to to why he
resigned would and this is just a guess, would be
that he clashed with Nichola Willis over the amount of

(02:55):
government funding the Reserve Bank would receive. And also they
clashed over the amount of capital that the Reserve Bank
requires banks to hold to make them strong. So those
are two things. It's probably about that. But you know,
I feel like details will just keep trickling out over.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Time, slowly but surely, a couple of big issues, couple
of big personalities, and maybe some raised voices. Thank you
for that, Genati of training insit heroes running in business
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