The RBA publishes its account of the September rate decision at 11.30 am AEDT on Tuesday 13 October, and while its contents are unknown until then, the public record shows which questions it is best placed to answer.

On Tuesday morning, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will release the minutes of the September 2026 meeting of its Monetary Policy Board, the meeting that produced the decision announced on 29 September to raise the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.60 per cent.

Minutes are the closest the public gets to the Board's internal discussion. The statement and the Governor's media conference tell readers what was decided and why, in broad terms. Minutes typically go further, setting out how members weighed the evidence.

The decision day, in sequence

The public record of 29 September and the days around it runs as follows:

  • 2.30 pm AEST, 29 September: the Board's statement announces a 25 basis point increase to 4.60 per cent. The decision was unanimous.
  • 3.30 pm AEST, 29 September: Governor Michele Bullock holds a media conference.
  • 30 September: the new cash rate target takes effect. The same day, the RBA's Financial Aggregates for August show business credit up 10.9 per cent over the year and housing credit up 7.3 per cent.
  • 1 October: the October 2026 Financial Stability Review is released.
  • 11.30 am AEDT, 13 October: the September minutes are published.

The September increase was the fourth of 2026. Three earlier rises took the cash rate to 4.35 per cent, where the Board held it unanimously in August, and total tightening this year now stands at 100 basis points.

What the statement and media conference already told us

The statement gave a compact account of the Board's reasoning. In paraphrase: inflation remains elevated; some upside risks have materialised, including further disruption to global oil supply from the Middle East conflict and strong AI-related demand pushing up technology-goods prices; higher fuel prices are partly passing through to other goods and services; capacity pressures remain; output growth has slowed and consumer spending is easing gradually; housing prices have fallen in most capital cities and new housing loans have declined noticeably; the labour market has eased broadly as expected; and business investment and debt growth are strong. The Board judged further tightening was warranted to return inflation to target in a reasonable period, and said it "will continue to do what it considers necessary".

At the media conference, Bullock added colour. "Inflation is too high and has been driven by domestic capacity pressures", she said, and "The AI boom is also adding to demand in the Australian economy at a time when we already have capacity pressures." She stressed that "It's critical that we stop expectations for high inflation from becoming embedded in price-setting decisions".

On inflation itself, headline CPI was 4.0 per cent over the year to August 2026, while Bullock put underlying inflation at "about 3.5 per cent for the past six months". The two should not be confused: the headline figure includes volatile items such as fuel, while underlying measures aim to capture the more persistent trend.

A guide from August

The August minutes, covering the 10–11 August meeting, offer a sense of the kind of material minutes contain. Among other things, they recorded that:

  • "The Board decided unanimously to leave the cash rate target unchanged at 4.35 per cent."
  • Policy was judged "sufficiently restrictive", with members "alert to the upside risks to the inflation outlook and being ready to act should they materialise."
  • Headline inflation had eased unexpectedly in year-ended terms in the June quarter, mainly due to lower retail fuel and travel prices, and the trimmed mean was 3.6 per cent.
  • Wage growth was expected to be constrained over time as spare labour capacity emerges from late 2027, though the near-term wage forecast was raised slightly because of recent wage decisions and agreements.
  • National housing prices had fallen about 1½ per cent from their March peak but were still about 5 per cent above a year earlier.
  • Global oil and product inventories were much lower than at the start of the conflict.

Whether the September minutes follow a similar structure or cover similar ground will only be clear on Tuesday.

Questions the minutes are placed to answer

Without guessing at the answers, the gap between the August and September records suggests several questions readers may look for the minutes to address:

  1. What changed between August and September? In August the Board held and called policy "sufficiently restrictive". In September it tightened, saying some upside risks had materialised. The minutes may explain how members weighed that shift.
  2. Were other options on the table? The statement records the outcome and that it was unanimous. Whether the minutes describe any alternatives members weighed is not known.
  3. How much weight went on AI-related demand? Bullock said the AI boom was adding to demand, while noting of data centres: "A lot of that is imported, so it's actually not directly impacting on demand in Australia."
  4. How did members view the labour market? Bullock cited unemployment of 4.6 per cent at the media conference, up from the 4.5 per cent she quoted to a parliamentary committee on 18 September.
  5. Is there any discussion of the path ahead? Bullock said "I'm not going to give you forward guidance." Whether the minutes say anything further on that front is unknown.

The bottom line

Tuesday's minutes are the next official window into the September decision, and they arrive before a busy run of RBA events: the Annual Report on Thursday 15 October, speeches by Christopher Kent, Ellis Connolly and Andrew Hauser between 18 and 21 October, the September CPI on 28 October and the next decision at 2.30 pm on 3 November. The record so far explains what the Board decided and its stated reasons. How members debated it is the part only the minutes can show, and until 11.30 am on Tuesday, their contents remain unknown.