The ABS put headline CPI at 4.0% for the year to August, up from 3.5% in July. Trimmed mean inflation held at 3.6%, unchanged from June and July. Both sit above the RBA's 2% to 3% target band, as Australian Broker reported.
The data landed a day after the RBA lifted the official cash rate to 4.60%, its fourth hike of 2026 and the highest setting since 2011.
What it changes for a business borrower
A higher cash rate flows through to the cost of variable business debt. Facilities priced off the cash rate or bank bill benchmarks, overdrafts, lines of credit, most variable-rate term loans, reprice upward with each move. If your borrowing sits on a variable rate, the ground under your repayments has shifted again.
The forward guidance matters more than the past number. Governor Michele Bullock said the bank would raise again this year "if that's what's needed to get inflation down," and that it will not cut until inflation is back inside the band. With trimmed mean stuck at 3.6% and headline moving the wrong way, the case for near-term relief is thin on the current data.
Bullock also noted the lag: her estimate is that rate changes take "12, sometimes, perhaps even 18 months" to work through the economy. Translated for a balance sheet, the four hikes already delivered are not yet fully priced into demand, arrears, or your customers' willingness to pay on time. The tightening you feel today is not the tightening still in the post.
For anyone modelling debt-servicing costs into early next year, the sensible planning assumption is that variable rates hold at these levels or higher, not that they ease. Fixed-rate structures remove that uncertainty but lock in today's elevated pricing. Neither is free.
We track these movements as they land. The number is history; the trajectory is the thing worth watching.