Here's business reporter Gareth Hutchens' response:

The Reserve Bank began officially “targeting” inflation in 1993. It was one of the first advanced economies to do so.

The theory behind inflation targeting says that, if we keep prices relatively stable and predictable, everyone can engage in their daily economic activity in a calm, orderly way, without having to worry about the value of the money deteriorating very much.

In the inflation targeting era, the RBA has tried to keep consumer inflation fluctuating between a range of 2 to 3 per cent on average over the cycle.

And since 1993, the cash rate has never been this low.

You might remember the cash rate was around 17 per cent in the very early 1990s.

At the start of the inflation targeting era, in 1993, it was around to 4.75%.

It picked up to 7.5 per cent in 1995, hovered around 5 per cent for the next decade, reached 7.25 per cent just before the global financial crisis hit in 2008, and then it began a slow, long-term deterioration all the way up to the pandemic, getting down to 0.75 per cent by February 2020 (at the end of that summer of horrific bushfires).

So, when the RBA dragged the cash rate down to 0.1 per cent during the pandemic – which were genuinely at emergency-level lows – interest rates had never been that low.