Why Sarah Hunter Would Not Predict the Next RBA Rate Decision

Aditi Sarkar

29 October 2026 09:03 PM AEDT

Why Sarah Hunter Would Not Predict the Next RBA Rate Decision

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Highlights

Hunter said in her 60 Minutes interview: "I'm not going to front run what the Board might or might not do with interest rates."
Rate decisions are made by the nine-member Monetary Policy Board, not by individual RBA officers or the Governor acting alone.
Bullock told her September media conference: "I'm not going to give you forward guidance." Hunter's approach is consistent with this.
The Board has stated conditional intent: it will raise further if required, but does not commit to a specific path.

A question about what the RBA might do next was met with a refusal. Sarah Hunter, the Reserve Bank's Assistant Governor (Economic), told a 60 Minutes interviewer on 25 October 2026 that she was not going to "front run what the Board might or might not do with interest rates." Her reply is a window into how the RBA now separates who decides from who communicates.

Who Decides and Who Does Not

The nine members of the Monetary Policy Board are: Michele Bullock (Governor and Chair), Andrew Hauser (Deputy Governor and Deputy Chair), Marnie Baker AM, Melinda Cilento, Renee Fry-McKibbin, Carolyn Hewson AO, Bruce Preston, Iain Ross AO, and Jenny Wilkinson PSM. The September decision was unanimous across all nine.

Sarah Hunter is not a Board member. As Assistant Governor (Economic), she leads the economic research and forecasting work that informs the Board. But she does not vote, and a public forecast of the Board's next move would be speaking for a decision that has not yet been made by a group she does not sit on. "Front running" is an apt description of that problem.

No Forward Guidance From the Top

Hunter's reluctance is consistent with the Governor's approach. At her 29 September media conference, Bullock said plainly: "I'm not going to give you forward guidance." Forward guidance involves signalling the likely future path of interest rates, either as a commitment or a hint about direction. The RBA's current stance avoids this.

That does not mean officials say nothing about conditions or direction. The Board has stated it will raise further if required. Bullock has confirmed the Board's conditional intent on multiple occasions. These statements tell markets what tool the Board is prepared to use and under what conditions, without specifying when or how many times.

What Hunter Did Say

Hunter was clear that higher rates do work to bring inflation down: "We know that higher interest rates will bring inflation down." She also confirmed the Board's stated approach: "It's not pain-free, it's not costless, but the cost of it is less using interest rates than it would be using other tools."

On households, she offered a current assessment: "But we're not seeing really bad outcomes yet." On recession: "We don't see any signs of that yet in any of the data that we track." Both statements describe what the data shows now, framed in a way that avoids any implication about the future path of rates.

FAQs

Q: Why did Hunter decline to predict the next RBA rate decision?

A: She said she would not front run what the Board might do. Rate decisions are made by the nine-member Monetary Policy Board, not by individual RBA officials.

Q: Is Hunter a member of the Monetary Policy Board?

A: No. She is the Assistant Governor (Economic), who provides economic research and analysis to inform Board decisions but does not vote on them.

Q: Has the RBA committed to a specific number of future rate rises?

A: No. The Board has stated it will raise further if required but has explicitly declined to provide forward guidance on the path of rates.

Q: What did Bullock say at the September media conference about forward guidance?

A: "I'm not going to give you forward guidance." She framed subsequent rate action as conditional on incoming data.

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