The Governor declined to signal the Board's next move, which leaves a crowded calendar of data and speeches to fill the gap before the 2.30 pm announcement on 3 November.

At her media conference on 29 September 2026, Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Michele Bullock chose to say very little about the future at all. Having just announced a 25 basis point increase that took the cash rate target to 4.60 per cent, she told reporters: "I'm not going to give you forward guidance."

That refusal is itself informative, though perhaps not in the way some might hope. It does not hint at a hike, a hold or a cut. What it does is shift attention to the evidence the Monetary Policy Board will weigh between now and its next meeting on 2–3 November. The questions below set out what the RBA has and has not said.

What exactly has the RBA committed to?

Very little, by design. The Board's statement of 29 September said it "will continue to do what it considers necessary" to return inflation to target, and that it remains attentive to the data. There is no promised sequence of moves and no timetable.

That stance was foreshadowed three weeks earlier. In an ABC 7.30 interview on 8 September, Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser noted that the Board has nine voting members and declined to pre-commit to a future path. He described the Board as taking a gradual approach to protect jobs, while adding that it could raise rates further if needed.

So the absence of guidance is consistent with how senior officials have been speaking for some time. It is a statement about process (decide meeting by meeting) rather than a coded message about direction.

How has the RBA described risks and inflation?

While it will not forecast its own decisions, the RBA has been open about how it sees the balance of risks. Readers can track that language across recent communications:

  • August minutes (meeting of 10–11 August): the Board judged policy "sufficiently restrictive", but members remained "alert to the upside risks to the inflation outlook and being ready to act should they materialise." Risks were judged skewed to the upside.
  • 14 September: Assistant Governor (Economic) Sarah Hunter said "we do think the risks to inflation right now are skewed to the upside".
  • 29 September statement: the Board said some upside risks had materialised, including further disruption to global oil supply from the Middle East conflict and strong AI-related demand pushing up technology-goods prices.

On the growth side, Bullock said of a recession: "That is not our central base case at this moment." She also noted that the unemployment rate had risen "from 3.5 per cent over the past couple of years to 4.6 per cent".

None of these statements tells readers what the Board will decide on 3 November. They show what it has been watching.

On inflation itself, two numbers are frequently cited, and they measure different things. Headline CPI inflation was 4.0 per cent over the year to August 2026, on the monthly CPI the Australian Bureau of Statistics began publishing in November 2025. Underlying inflation, which strips out more volatile price movements, is lower: Bullock said it had been "about 3.5 per cent for the past six months", and the trimmed mean was 3.6 per cent in the June quarter.

Both sit above the 2–3 per cent target, whose midpoint is 2.5 per cent. The forecasts published with the August minutes had underlying inflation above 3 per cent until mid-2027 and around 2½ per cent in late 2027. On 18 September, Bullock told a parliamentary committee the Board's forecast at that time had inflation back at the target midpoint by late 2027.

What arrives before the decision?

With no guidance, the calendar matters. According to the RBA's published schedule, the following are due before the Board announces its decision:

  1. Tuesday 13 October, 11.30 am AEDT – minutes of the September Monetary Policy Board meeting.
  2. Thursday 15 October, after 3.00 pm AEDT – the RBA Annual Report 2026.
  3. 18 October, 11.00 am AEDT – Assistant Governor Christopher Kent interviewed on News 24 with Ross Greenwood.
  4. 19 October, 10.05 am AEDT – Kent in a fireside chat at the Commonwealth Bank Global Markets Conference.
  5. 20 October, 9.50 am AEDT – a fireside chat with Ellis Connolly, Head of Payments Policy, at the AFIA conference.
  6. 21 October, 9.30 am AEDT – Hauser at the Citi ANZ Investment Conference.
  7. 28 October – the September CPI.
  8. 2–3 November – the Board meeting, with the decision at 2.30 pm on 3 November. The RBA has said its next forecast update is in November.

The September CPI is the one hard inflation reading on the list. The minutes may add detail on how members weighed the September decision, but their contents are not known until release.

What is not known?

Plenty, and it is worth being plain about it:

  • The outcome of the 3 November meeting is not known, and the RBA has not hinted at it.
  • What the September CPI will show is not known.
  • What the September minutes contain is not known before Tuesday.
  • Whether any of the scheduled speakers will discuss the policy outlook, and in what terms, is not known.

What is known is the framework the Board says it uses. Its September statement noted that output growth has slowed, consumer spending is easing gradually, housing prices have fallen in most capital cities and labour market conditions have eased broadly as expected, while business investment and debt growth are strong and capacity pressures remain. Bullock said bond markets were "reacting in an orderly way", summing up her stance as: "So at this stage, I'd say not alarmed, but we are alert to it."

The bottom line

Bullock's refusal to offer forward guidance means there is no official signal to decode ahead of 3 November. The Board has said it will "continue to do what it considers necessary" and will stay attentive to the data, and senior officials have consistently declined to pre-commit. Between now and the announcement, the September minutes, the Annual Report, speeches by Kent, Connolly and Hauser, and the 28 October CPI will add to the public record. How the nine voting members weigh that record is something only the decision itself will reveal.