RBA Assistant Governor Kent said there is reasonable evidence that neutral interest rates are rising in Australia and abroad

Remarks on the neutral rate from a senior central bank official are a slow-moving signal rather than a pricing event: r-star debates have tended to surface through speeches and research pieces well before they show up in the policy statement, and the market read is about the terminal level embedded in the curve rather than the timing of the next move. The transmission channel here is the back end and the long-run neutral assumptions in OIS pricing, not the front end; an upward revision to neutral raises where markets think the cycle ultimately settles, steepening or bear-flattening depending on how much of the current path is already assumed restrictive. Assistant Governors with the markets or economics brief have historically been the ones used to float these analytical framings, partly to test reaction before it hardens into official guidance. The question precedent suggests matters is whether the comment is descriptive of offshore developments or prescriptive for domestic policy, since neutral-rate talk has on past occasions been a precursor to a higher-for-longer stance when delivered by officials close to the decision. Follow-ons are whether other RBA speakers or the next statement echo the framing, and any research publication formalising the estimate.