Australia's hands-off method for setting monetary policy relies, solely, on the wisdom and independence of the Reserve Bank.

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Much like our courts, the central bank's autonomy lifts its Monetary Policy Board above the fray of popularity or politics.

Despite the dire implications for borrowers, businesses and savers, its rulings bespeak expertise, resolve, even infallibility.

But is this deserved?

Unlike our courts, the board's unicameral structure and opaque deliberations offer those on the losing end of decisions, no appellate tribunal.

We don't learn what was argued in meetings nor who voted for and against a given cash rate decision.

That is a problem. Or rather, it covers a cluster of problems. For a start, it obscures the weighting placed on fragmentary, iterative ABS data (some of which actually gets revised in subsequent quarters), human subjectivity, sectoral and political loyalties among board members, and incompetence.

It also encourages something else arising from unscrutinised power - a sense, internally, that the central bank alone, is uniquely placed to make prognostications about future economic conditions.

You and I might read that as an absence of humility - or worse, arrogance.

This is not a new failing. Thirty-five years ago, it was a factor in "the recession we had to have".

Back then, some borrowers were protected from peak rates of 17.5-plus per cent because the Reserve Bank had only recently been handed responsibility for setting monetary policy. Longer-standing mortgage loans were thus capped at 13 per cent.

Still, the ramifications of such punishing conditions were widespread, and economists are still divided on whether it was the central bank itself which worsened, if not fomented, that recession.

Some argue that the credit-fuelled asset........

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