Adrian Orr departs RBNZ still congratulating himself

But what’s more surprising is that he has hung on so long; two of the three parties making up the current coalition government had made it abundantly clear in November 2022 that they were opposed to his having been reappointed for a second five-year term.

There were ample grounds to justify dismissing him; he was expressly charged with containing inflation between 1% and 3% and inflation was outside that range for all three of the years ended June 2024, peaking at 7.3% in the year ended June 2022.

While inflation did return to the target range in the year ended September last year, it has taken what some have called an even worse recession than during the global financial crisis – in that September year, per-capita GDP fell 2.1%.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub has said that the economy has essentially been in recession since September 2022 on a per-capita basis.