, a focus has been on central counterparties, which facilitate efficient and safe clearing of some types of financial transactions. these entities are increasingly important given the way global regulatory standards have been moving. the bank has focused on ensuring their risk management meets the highest standards and that they have the capacity to recover from financial shocks. we have also done a lot of work to ensure that our regulatory framework is appropriately recognised by regulators in other jurisdictions, which is important if we are to keep the australian financial system connected with the global system. with those remarks, chair, my colleagues and i await your questions. bis central bankers ’ speeches

. there is a degree of irreducible uncertainty here and hence the possibility of further financial market volatility at some point. overall though, it seems very likely that global interest rates will still be quite low for quite some time yet. bis central bankers ’ speeches for australia, we cannot, of course, determine our terms of trade or other forces in the global economy. we can only adjust to them. the record of adjustment in recent years is good. we negotiated the financial crisis without a major financial crisis of our own or a big downturn in economic activity. we negotiated the first two phases of the resources boom without major inflationary problems, and are part way through our adjustment to the third phase – so far without a major slump in overall economic activity. there is still a pretty good chance that we will come out of this episode fairly well, and much better than we came out of previous episodes of this type. i now turn briefly to another area of the bank ’ s responsibilities, namely the payments system. the new payments platform ( npp ) will enable real - time, data - rich payments on a 24 / 7 basis for households, businesses and government agencies. the payments system board, having worked to facilitate the process of the private sector coming together to drive this project, supports the industry ’ s efforts. the reserve bank itself is making good progress in its own part in this project. in the card payments area, the bank has announced a review and we released an issues paper in early march. among other things, the review contemplates the potential for changes to the regulation of card surcharges and interchange fees. it provides an opportunity to consider some of the issues raised in the financial system inquiry. as usual, the bank has been consulting widely, including via a roundtable in june that included representatives from over 30 interested organisations. the payments system board has asked the staff to liaise with industry participants on the possible “ designation ” of certain card systems. a decision to designate a system is the first of a number of steps the bank must take to exercise any of its regulatory powers in respect of a payment system, but does not commit it to a regulatory course of action. the payments system board will have further discussions on the case for changes to the regulatory framework at future meetings. in the event that the board were to propose changes to the regulatory framework, the bank would, as usual, undertake a thorough consultation process on any draft standards. in our financial stability role