SENATOR Gerard Rennick, who is standing for Senate re-election with the People First Party, has called on the federal government to find out exactly where Australia’s gold is located.
Senator Rennick is asking the question after he was told in Budget Estimates committees that the Bank of England holds fake gold bars with duplicate serial numbers “and does nothing about it”.
Cairns News checked the Reserve Bank of Australia’s website on Australia’s gold holdings and found the official statements somewhat confusing. Readers with some experience in government economic jargon are invited to give their “interpretation”.
The website states: “As part of Australia’s official reserve assets, the Reserve Bank holds an amount of gold. Including gold that is on loan, the RBA’s holdings amount to 80 tonnes, with the full value of these holdings recorded as an asset on the RBA’s balance sheet.”
So Australia has 80 tonnes of gold, the spot price of which is currently around US2900 a troy ounce, which translates into USD7,458,800,000 or AUD11,820,706,240.00. So our reserve assets are supposedly worth about $11.8 billion – not a huge amount by today’s inflated standards.
The RBA continues: “To align the RBA’s reporting methodology with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) guidelines, since 2015 any gold that has been lent by the RBA is recorded as a forward inflow of foreign currency in the official reserves data and excluded from the RBA’s physical gold holdings.
“Similarly, any gold that the RBA has borrowed is excluded from the RBA’s physical gold holdings in the official reserves data.”
So the RBA says it has 80 tonnes of gold holdings including gold that is on loan, but the gold on loan is excluded from the RBA’s physical gold holdings. So how much gold is on loan? We don’t see the answer to that anywhere, unless we missed it.
Physical gold for delivery at the London Bullion Market Association is currently reported to be delayed by four to eight weeks, which technically puts the LMBA in default. The normal delivery time is one week.
Meanwhile Senator Rennick has accused the Federal Government of wilful ignorance on how much gold Australia actually possesses. He says it’s also been admitted by the RBA that the Bank of England holds fake gold bars but for what purpose is not stated.
“Both sides of politics are equally guilty of wilful ignorance about the status of Australia’s reserves,” he said. The senator says he started the People First Party due to the abuses of power and wasteage of taxpayers’ money by both sides of politics.
“No wonder that the value of the Australian dollar has been going down badly for months, due to this uncertainty.
“Having good reserves of gold held within Australia is a commonsense idea that deserves democratic consultation, and not to be swept under the carpet by both sides of politics,” he said.
