RBA's Fifth Hike Adds About A$94 a Month on A$600,000; Three Voted to Hold

On Sept. 29, the Reserve Bank of Australia's Monetary Policy Board raised the cash rate with nobody against. Thirty-five days later, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, three of its nine members voted to leave it where it was.

The other six won. The board lifted the cash rate target by 25 basis points (a quarter of a percentage point) to 4.85%, the fifth increase of 2026 and the highest level since November 2008. The announcement came at 2.30 pm AEDT, on Melbourne Cup Day.

A 6–3 vote reads like a hinge, and Reuters reported that Markets are wagering the RBA will be on hold in December after the split vote. But the board's own record this year says to be careful. It split 5–4 in March and hiked again in May. It split 8–1 in May and then held twice. The split is a signal, not a schedule. What shifted on Nov. 3 is the burden of proof: the next increase now has to be earned by data that arrives before the decision on Tuesday, Dec. 8.

The cost to borrowers, meanwhile, is already locked in. A borrower with A$600,000 and 25 years left is paying about A$461 more a month than in January, on the illustration below, whatever the board does next.

What A$600,000 costs now

Three interest rates drive the table below, and each has a source. The starting point is 5.49% for January, which is Canstar's expected post-hike average variable rate of 6.74% minus the 1.25 points of increases this year; the RBA's own table F6 shows owner-occupier variable rates at 5.5% that month. The second is 6.49%, the rate before Nov. 3. Canstar's Sally Tindall said the average variable rate currently sits at 6.49 per cent. The third is 6.74%, which Canstar expects the hike to produce.

Loan	Years left	January (5.49%)	Before Nov. 3 (6.49%)	After (6.74%)	This hike	Since January
A$500,000	25	3,067	3,373	3,451	+78	+384
A$600,000	25	3,681	4,047	4,142	+94	+461
A$731,000	25	4,485	4,931	5,046	+115	+561
A$500,000	30	2,836	3,157	3,240	+83	+404
A$600,000	30	3,403	3,788	3,888	+99	+485
A$731,000	30	4,146	4,616	4,736	+121	+590

Illustration: assumes full pass-through; rates from Canstar's averages; see text. Monthly repayments in A$; A$731,000 is the average new owner-occupier loan, per The Conversation. Differences are calculated from unrounded payments, so they can differ by A$1 from the rounded figures shown.

This is an illustration, not a quote. It assumes the lender passes on every hike in full and that the loan is the stated size with the stated years left on each date; real repayments depend on the lender, any discount, an offset balance and how far the loan has already been paid down.

On those terms, A$600,000 with 25 years to run now costs A$4,142 a month. About A$94 of that comes from this hike. The year's five hikes together add about A$461 a month, or A$5,529 over 12 months.

The arithmetic lands close to the coverage. ABC put each quarter-point at roughly A$92 on a loan of this size, and Canstar's Tindall put the year's cost at around A$456 a month. The Conversation's A$120 on A$731,000, which does not state a loan term, sits beside the A$121 above for 30 years. (ABC's description of five hikes "totalling 1 per cent" is a slip; the total is 1.25 points.)

Not everyone starts from the average. Canstar says, as ABC reported, that a borrower who took out an owner-occupier mortgage five years ago and has not renegotiated could find themselves on a rate of 7.34%. The timing matters too. AMP's Shane Oliver expects banks will likely announce a 0.25 per cent increase in their mortgage rates on the same day, as they did after the first four hikes. Macquarie Bank has said its increase takes effect on Thursday, Nov. 19, after waiting more than two weeks. When Savings.com.au's tracker was saved, ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac were still "yet to announce".

Three votes, no names

Who dissented? The RBA does not say. It publishes the tally but not the individual votes, and its minutes describe "one member" or "a minority of members" without names. As investingLive put it, the identities of the dissenters have not been disclosed. The minutes of the Nov. 3 meeting arrive on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 11.30 am AEDT and will list who attended, not how each person voted.

Why they dissented is another matter, because Governor Michele Bullock explained it at the press conference:

"They felt that there were potential downside risks in these circumstances, particularly since we'd already done four interest rate rises, and maybe we should wait a bit longer to get some more data to test that. So that was the argument in favour of a hold."

Michele Bullock, RBA Governor, Nov. 3 press conference

ABC reported that the downside risks she listed were a housing downturn, a rising unemployment rate and no sign of faster wage growth. Housing prices in September were "almost 5 per cent below their March peak", the RBA says, and unemployment is 4.7%, a five-year high according to Reuters.

This is a dissent about timing, which echoes March. In March, the minority said inflation was too high and that further tightening "would probably be required", but saw merit in delaying until the effects of the Middle East conflict became clearer. The May dissenter went further and "placed more weight on the arguments for leaving the cash rate target unchanged".

The 2026 votes, taken from the RBA's statements and minutes, make the pattern easy to see.

Decision day (2026)	Move	Cash rate	Vote
Tue., Feb. 3	Hike	3.85%	Unanimous
Tue., March 17	Hike	4.10%	5–4
Tue., May 5	Hike	4.35%	8–1
Tue., June 16	Hold	4.35%	Unanimous
Tue., Aug. 11	Hold	4.35%	Unanimous
Tue., Sept. 29	Hike	4.60%	Unanimous
Tue., Nov. 3	Hike	4.85%	6–3

Read it as a forecaster would. Splits came in March, May and November. The March split was followed by a hike and the May split by a pause, so the record cannot call December. Still, only March had a thinner majority than this one, and the statement itself changed.

On Sept. 29, the board said it would do what it considers necessary to bring inflation back to target, "including increasing the cash rate target further if needed". On Nov. 3 that sentence stops at "target". This is what central bankers call forward guidance, a stated lean that markets trade on, which is why such wording moves mortgage rates. In August the clause read "if upside risks materialise". It has now gone entirely. UBS chief economist George Tharenou called it Clearly dovish.

Bullock herself declined to promise anything. Asked if the RBA is on hold, she said No, you shouldn't take it to mean anything in particular. I don't know what the next move will be. Then she added the line that best frames December:

"So it is probably a good point to just take stock for a minute and see what comes in, in terms of the data, to see if we're travelling more or less in line with the forecasts."

Michele Bullock, RBA Governor

Her wording leaves the door open. The board will be "watching very closely", she said, because there is "still a bit of a skew on the upside to inflation risks".

Four key releases before Dec. 8

The calendar supplies the main data. First is the minutes on Tuesday, Nov. 17. Two days later, on Thursday, Nov. 19, the Bureau of Statistics publishes October Labour Force figures. On Wednesday, Nov. 25 comes October monthly CPI, and on Wednesday, Dec. 2 the September-quarter GDP. The decision follows on Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 2.30 pm AEDT, 35 days after this one. According to the RBA's schedule of releases, there is no Statement on Monetary Policy in December, so no fresh staff forecasts that day.

The November forecasts set the bar. The RBA now sees year-ended CPI inflation at 4.5% in December, up from a previous forecast of 3.6%, and says headline and underlying inflation will stay above 3% until the end of 2027. If October data lands in line with that, the "take stock" case holds. If it overshoots, the dissenters' argument weakens.

Economists are split. BlackRock's Katherine Palmer says we expect the RBA to hold from here as it assesses incoming data and policy transmission, and Capital Economics' Marcel Theliant thinks the RBA is likely "now done tightening though it probably won't loosen policy until the end of next year". CommBank's Belinda Allen says the RBA will ultimately keep rates on hold. ANZ, before the decision, saw a "material risk" of 5.10% in December or February, and Betashares' David Bassanese says his base case is the RBA will raise rates again in February 2027.

Part of this fight is about which inflation number to trust, because four are in circulation. The 4.3% is the Bureau of Statistics' monthly headline CPI for the year to September, and 3.6% is its monthly trimmed mean, which strips out the biggest price swings. The 3.9% and 3.7% are the quarterly headline and trimmed mean figures the RBA cites. They are different measures, not a disagreement. The next monthly reading lands Nov. 25.

4.85% is 50 basis points above the 4.35% peak of November 2023. The pace is the bigger difference: the 2022–23 cycle took 13 increases and about 18 months to lift the rate from 0.10% to 4.35%, while this year's five increases took nine months.

Are borrowers coping? It depends on whom you ask. In the RBA's October Financial Stability Review, the share of variable-rate owner-occupiers in a cash-flow shortfall was "around 2 per cent", and most of them have savings to cover at least six months. That estimate covers the first half of 2026, before the September and November hikes. ABC reported Canstar research that one in 10 mortgage customers will have trouble with the higher repayments, though its method isn't stated. The two numbers measure different things and should not be blended.

The RBA adds that scheduled payments reached just over 10% of household disposable income, around their 2024 peak. Interest rates are above that earlier peak, yet it expects stress to "peak at a lower level". For anyone near their limit, Tindall's advice is to ask the bank for a rate review. The University of Newcastle's Mardy Chiah says cutting from 6.5% to 6% on an A$500,000 mortgage could save about A$160 a month over 30 years.

When do rates fall? Not soon. The RBA does not expect inflation to reach the top of its 2–3% range until late 2027, and Bullock says the board is not looking to tip the economy into recession if we can avoid it.

That leaves one more piece of arithmetic. Bullock noted that There's now five interest rate increases in the system. Now the last couple haven't even started to flow through yet. A sixth quarter-point, which would take the average variable rate to 6.99%, would add about A$95 a month on A$600,000 over 25 years. The board next sits on Tuesday, Dec. 8, with the last two it ordered still on their way to the bill.