Philip Lowe has admitted some public comments he made during his tenure “missed the mark” in his final speech as Reserve Bank governor.

Dr Lowe steps down as head of Australia’s central bank later this month, passing the reins to deputy governor Michele Bullock.

Making some final remarks on Thursday, Dr Lowe said the pandemic was his greatest challenge, but the issue that defined his term would be his comment that interest rates would remain low.

Dr Lowe acknowledged the difficulties he faced communicating complex monetary policy in the digital age.

He said there were learnings to be gleaned from his ill-communicated forward guidance — that interest rates would not start rising until 2024 — that landed him in hot water.

But he stressed this was not a “promise”, but guidance with conditions attached, noting this was one of many points attributed to him inaccurately in his time as governor.

Dr Lowe said he had not made points such as “…everybody needs to get a flatmate, people need to work more hours to make ends meet and young adults should stay at home because of the rental crisis”.

While acknowledging that some of his explanations had “missed the mark”, he said “the media has some responsibility too”.

“My view is that we will get better outcomes if the public square is filled with facts and nuanced and informed debate, rather than vitriol, personal attacks and clickbait.”

Looking forward, Dr Lowe suggested a future of wildly varying inflation, but sustained low unemployment.

Dr Lowe said inflation was more variable during his term than in the previous two decades – below or above the midpoint of the 2-3 per cent target range.

“My view is that it will be difficult to return to the world in which inflation tracked in a very narrow range,” he said.

“Increased prevalence of supply shocks, deglobalisation, climate change, the energy transmission and shifts in demographics mean either steeper supply curves or more variable supply curves.

“This doesn’t mean that on average inflation can’t meet the target, but I think it does mean that inflation will be more variable than it was for the last 20 years, and we all need to adjust to that.”

The RBA has raised interest rates for months to try to curb inflation, before pausing for the past three meetings.

On the upside, Dr Lowe said unemployment in Australia was at the lowest rate in nearly 50 years and it was possible it could remain that way.

“The share of Australians with a job today has never been higher, and the number of people with a job has increased by more than 2 million since mid-2016,” he said.

“The current cycle, of course, still has some way to run. But it is certainly possible that Australia now can sustain an unemployment rate below the rate we have had for the last 40 years.

“If we can do that, and I think we can, that’s very good news for the economy, and for our society. It is good news for children in particular because they can now get jobs, and the youth unemployment rate today is the lowest it has been in 30 years. So this is good news.”

Dr Lowe also commented on the role of interest rates on the housing market.

“Interest rates influence housing prices, but they are not the reason that Australia has some of the highest cost of housing in the world,” he said.

Rather, the high cost of housing in Australia was a “serious economic and social problem” stemming from a range of choices made “as a society”.

“Choices about where we live, how we design our cities, and zone and regulate urban land, how we invest in and design transport systems, and how we tax land and housing investment,” he said.

Dr Lowe called for a “stronger helping hand” from the government to manage the economy.

Interest rates were effective but had limitations, not least the fact their impacts were felt unevenly across the economy, he said.

Some innovative thinking would be needed to do this, Dr Lowe said, and some rejigging of existing architecture.

“In particular, it would require making some fiscal instruments more nimble, strengthening the [semi]-automatic stabilisers and giving an independent body limited control over some fiscal instruments.”