Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Phil Lowe has apologised for publicly declaring that interest rates wouldn’t increase until 2024.

Appearing before the Senate Economics Legislation Committee in Canberra, Lowe said, “I’m certainly sorry if people listened to what we said and then acted on what we’d said and now regret what they had done”.

Lowe’s advice has led to countless Australians now finding themselves in a debt crisis, as soaring interest rates means they are saddled with a home loan they can no longer afford.

Lowe explained that in “2020 and 2021 the country was in a dire situation, and we wanted to do everything we could to get the country through that, and we had a strong insurance mindset”.

Lowe speaks of forecasts of 15 per cent unemployment, and “a generation of young kids not being able to find jobs … and we decided to do whatever we could”.

The economy bounced back much quicker than Lowe was prepared for.

“We also thought that given the dire outlook we thought it was unlikely that inflation would pick up quickly and we wanted to send a message that interest rates were going to stay low for a long period of time.

“At the time I thought that was the right thing to do, ex post, the economy recovered much more quickly than anyone expected and we’ve had to raise interest rates more quickly and people who borrowed in those two years are now finding it much more difficult.

“Looking back, we would have chosen different language. People didn’t hear the caveats. That’s a failure on our part: we didn’t communicate the caveats clearly enough.

“The community heard 2024, they didn’t hear the conditionality, and that’s partly our fault.”