Mike's Minute: Orr has shown his lack of professionalism

Michael Reddell, who appears on this show a fair bit, has put the Adrian Orr resignation back in the news.

He has a source close to the action that, in simple terms, suggests that Orr packed a sad at a couple of meetings, one of which was with Nicola Willis, the chair of the Reserve Bank Neil Quigley wrote to Orr with a list of concerns over that behaviour, and Orr quit.

The underlying issue appears to be the fact the Government were determined to cut the Reserve Bank's budget, which ultimately, they were successful in doing.

Why?

Because like everything else under the Labour Government, too much money was spent, things blew out and the Reserve Bank had wandered off into new and expensive areas they didn’t need to be in.

The main point being: essentially what we thought happened, did.

Adrian Orr has a short fuse, a fairly elevated sense of entitlement and importance, and didn’t like what was unfolding – which is fine. He didn’t have to like it and if he disliked it so badly, he could walk, which he did.

But, and here is where this is important, he held a critical role in all our lives. People in jobs like that need to exemplary.

Exemplary in execution and exemplary in person.

He wasn’t. He was a failure.

Which then takes us back to how he got the job: through Grant Robertson.

Not only did Robertson appoint Orr, he reappointed him. Bad people make bad decisions, and those bad decisions go on to have consequences.

By way of contrast what do you reckon the pressure on Jerome Powell is like right now? Is Powell yelling and packing a sad? Is Powell going to quit in a massive hissy fit and vanish from the face of the earth without a word?

I have a dollar with anyone who wants it that the answer is "no".

Maybe Orr doesn’t give a monkey’s. Maybe Orr is that sort of bloke who's so inflated and mesmerised by himself that he is well past any reputational reflection.

Maybe Grant is too.

But the damage still sits in our bank accounts and rates bills and economic funk to this day.

The bloke who stuffed the joint, packed a sad and stormed out, never to be heard from again. It’s a sad indictment on a role and influence that should have been handled a great deal more elegantly and with a mile more professionalism.

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