Australia’s Parkinson Sees Currency ‘High for Some Time’

Australia’s Treasury secretary said the local currency will stay elevated “for some time,” a rise the central bank signaled would help contain inflation spurred by the nation’s biggest mining-investment boom.

“The Australian dollar, which is currently at record levels, can be expected to move roughly in line with the terms of trade over the longer term,” Martin Parkinson, the Treasury’s top bureaucrat, said in a speech today in Sydney, referring to a measure of export income. “It is therefore expected to also remain persistently high for some time.”