Have we allowed them to stay too low and so encouraged the build-up of an inflationary process, or have we raised them too high and so set in train a contractionary or deflationary process? These are the important questions, and any judgment on them must be based on the medium-term performance of the Australian economy.
This may not be a simple task, but I would suggest that a favourable judgment would require that the macro-economic performance of the Australian economy be better than in earlier decades, and that it stand up well in comparisons with the experience of other countries over the same period. BIS Review 64/2000  6