Natalie Barr calls out Philip Lowe as interest rates are set to hike again today

Natalie Barr has taken aim at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) boss as interest rates are set to rise for the eighth time this year.

Reserve Bank Governor Dr Philip Lowe is tipped to lift the cash rate by another 0.25 per cent on Tuesday, bringing it to a ten-year high of 3.1 per cent.

Rates have gone up every month since May, with the Sunrise host calling out Mr Lowe after he promised they wouldn’t rise until 2024.

‘We heard the reserve bank Governor [Philip Lowe] say ”I apologise if you listened to us when we said don’t worry, they won’t go up for a few years”,’ she said on Tuesday morning.

Barr’s guest Dr Christian Baylis from Fortlake Asset Management, gave another grim prediction and said interest rates are only set to climb even further after Christmas.

‘I don’t think there’s going to be too many Christmas gifts from the RBA today,’ he said.

‘Dr Lowe is certainly in the Kris Kringle naughty corner at the moment, he’s certainly not getting much love from the community.

‘Ultimately when you’ve got a world of heightened uncertainty, you’re coming out of a one-in-100-year pandemic, the last thing you want to be doing is selling false interest rate hope.

‘That is ultimately how it came across. It is all about communication, you’re betting off telling people the truth and letting them know it is an uncertain world. I think that is where they fell short.’

Natalie Barr has taken aim at the RBA boss as interest rates are set to rise for the eighth time this year

Barr then asked Mr Baylis if he thought Dr Lowe ‘felt bad’ about the false promise, and therefore wasn’t raising the interest rates higher than they were – to which the expert agreed.

‘Those sort of things definitely weigh on the psyche of the board and Dr Lowe himself,’ he said.

Mr Baylis warned Australians could expect a ‘grisly, gloomy Christmas’ this year as workers’ disposable income wasn’t rising, as well as the increase in inflation and interest rates.  

Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said the Reserve Bank was likely to raise rates by another 0.25 percentage points on Tuesday to deal with the worst inflation in 32 years.

‘A further 25 basis point adjustment at the December meeting is likely to have been firmly on the board’s future agenda when it last met on November 1,’ he said.

The rate hike would mean a borrower with an average $600,000 mortgage would soon see their monthly repayments climb by another $91 to $3,236.

Reserve Bank Governor Dr Philip Lowe is tipped to lift the cash rate by another 0.25 per cent on Tuesday, bringing it to a ten-year high of 3.1 per cent