Bryan Brown was in Canberra this week talking numbers and why streaming services should bankroll Australian stories.
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The veteran actor/producer/author starred in the 1999 Sydney-based comic-crime drama, Two Hands. Numbers are common in movie titles - Thirteen Days, Seven Years in Tibet, The Sixth Sense, and the arthouse biopic, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Stevens ... er, sorry, that should've been the late Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, not the last (but one) head of the RBA.
So anyway, what chance some Netflix dosh for a modern Australian tale of boom and bust, of the Australian dream turned nightmare which ends in a showdown - Lowe Noon?
It is an epic tussle of restraint and excess, sunlit uplands of prosperity and clover, followed by fallow years in the dank valleys of despair. Cold Mountain of Debt?
It's a familiar arc in which a nerdy and slightly introverted macro-economist rises through the ranks of the central bank to become a recognised and respected public figure. How he slowly enlarges his standing as governor, giving more interviews and speeches than his predecessors and becoming ever more expansive in his predictions and prognostications.
Amid the most turbulent economic conditions since the Great Depression, the governor, who was arguably too cautious before COVID in allowing the jobless rate to stay high while inflation ran too low, suddenly steps forward, slashing the already record-low cash rate of 1.5 per cent like Shintaro on cocaine.
![Philip Lowe drew heavy criticism in his role as Reserve Bank governor. Philip Lowe drew heavy criticism in his role as Reserve Bank governor.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/130ef5e0-325c-4997-a639-4190a6f3a95f.jpg/r0_0_729_410_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The conservative government cheers as the cash rate drops six times between June 2019 and November 2020 to be just 0.10 per cent - functionally zero. Warming to this popular task, Lowe goes further, telling households and businesses the official rate will stay down there until 2024.
But the storm clouds are already gathering. Inflationary pressures bedevilling comparable economies go under-remarked as borrowers view the cheap money as the new normal. Many over-commit.
When the belated rate-reckoning finally comes, it comes fast and furious.
The first four are harsh half-percentage point rises, beginning in the election campaign of 2022, and there's one every month until March of the next year. A dozen so far.
Anxiety soars as governor Lowe insists he didn't actually promise permanently cheap loans. But nobody cares. Suddenly Lowe is the villain, his cherished statutory independence feeling more like isolation. Unforgiven, maybe?
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At first the new Labor government is comfortable as Lowe acts as a human shield, but it knows extending his term would read like congratulations for deepening the household pain.
And so a replacement is sought. Someone different. Someone "history-making" ... a woman, perhaps?
Working title: First Female? Too vague. Madam Governor? Too old-fashioned. Governor Nine? How about "Twelve Hikes: escape from the Lowe countries".