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The head of the Reserve Bank of Australia has flagged more rate rises in coming months.

However, RBA Governor Philip Lowe said the case for a slower pace of tightening was becoming stronger as the cash rate level rises.

"But how high interest rates need to go and how quickly we get there will be guided by the incoming data and the evolving outlook for inflation and the labour market," he told the Anika Foundation in Sydney on Thursday.

Dr Lowe's speech follows another rise of 50 basis points in the cash rate on Tuesday to tame soaring inflation. It was the fifth interest rate hike since May.

The RBA governor also addressed calls for his resignation from the Greens and Nationals senator Matt Canavan, based on an earlier assertion that rates would not start rising until 2024.

"I can assure you I have no plans to resign," he said.

Despite surging inflation, Dr Lowe said the economy was also showing signs of strength, including record low unemployment.

"People have jobs. Kids have opportunities. Household incomes are rising. That's what I would say to people who don't like me in my job," he said.

Dr Lowe also said he never promised rates would not start rising until 2024.

"What we said was we thought the pandemic was going to have long-lasting disruptive effects on the economy that would keep inflation low and would keep unemployment high for years, and we wanted to do what we could to prevent that," he said.

"And that meant we were likely to keep interest rates low for a long period of time out to 2024, so it was highly conditional."

In his speech, Dr Lowe used the opportunity to explain the board's "very large forecast miss" to foresee the surge in inflation, which triggered the aggressive policy tightening.

"Forecast misses of this scale should lead to soul-searching by forecasters, and they certainly have at the RBA," he said.

Dr Lowe laid out the reasons for the unexpected lift in inflation, starting with Russia's invasion of Ukraine limiting the production of energy.

He also said there was a surge in demand for goods at a time when COVID was interrupting production and therefore supply.

"The result was that many industries quickly found themselves on the sharply upward-sloping part of the supply curve, and prices increased," Dr Lowe said.

He said the home building sector was a good example of this trend.

"Very strong demand in this sector - partly due to low interest rates and government grants totalling up to $35,000 for some first-home buyers - came up against COVID-related problems on the supply side," Dr Lowe said.

"The result was a big jump in prices, which has had a material impact on the overall inflation rate in Australia."

Regarding further rate hikes, Dr Lowe said the board was "not on a pre-set path".

He flagged three areas of uncertainty the board would be monitoring closely.

The first was the gloomy state of the global economy.

"Some slowing in the global economy will help bring inflation down, but a sharp slowing would make the job of delivering a soft landing here in Australia much harder," Dr Lowe said.

He said the bank was also carefully watching shifts in inflation psychology.

"By this, I mean the general willingness of businesses to seek price increases, and the willingness of the community to accept price increases," Dr Lowe said.

He said it was unclear how households would respond to higher interest rates, with the full effects of rapidly rising rates still playing out.

© AAP 2022

The suspect sought by Canadian authorities in a weekend stabbing spree that killed 10 people has been arrested but suffered unspecified "medical distress" and died in hospital a short time later.

Official word that the four-day manhunt for Myles Sanderson, 30, ended with his death came during a late-night news conference on Wednesday, hours after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) reported he had been taken into custody.

The RCMP said the arrest took place near the town of Rosthern, Saskatchewan, about 100 kilometres southwest of the area where one of the bloodiest acts of mass violence in the country's history unfolded on Sunday.

Canada's Global News agency, citing multiple law enforcement sources, later reported that Sanderson had surrendered to police and was taken away alive in an ambulance after a highway pursuit in which police rammed his vehicle off the road.

Global News said he died shortly afterward of unspecified injuries that authorities believe were self-inflicted.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore told reporters Sanderson "went into medical distress" shortly after he was detained, that emergency medical personnel on the scene attended to him and he was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

She declined to address questions about whether he might have consumed a drug or other substance that killed him, saying the cause of death would be determined by an autopsy.

His older brother and accused accomplice, Damien Sanderson, 31, was found slain on Monday in a grassy area of the James Smith Cree Nation.

Police were investigating whether the younger sibling might have killed his brother, and that he might have sustained an injury requiring medical attention.

Blackmore said an emergency caller who reported seeing Myles Sanderson before his arrest indicated he appeared to have had a visible injury.

As well as the 10 victims killed on Sunday, 18 others were wounded in the rampage, which unnerved a country where instances of mass murder are rare.

Police said some of the victims appeared to have been targeted, while others were apparently random.

Authorities have offered no motive for the attacks, which occurred on the James Smith Cree Nation reserve, home to about 3400 people, and the nearby village of Weldon, about 300km north of the provincial capital of Regina.

With Myles Sanderson's death, "we may never have an understanding of that motivation", Blackmore said.

Sanderson's arrest came hours after new details about the victims and the circumstances of their deaths were brought to light by relatives.

During an emotional news conference, Saskatoon Tribal Council Chief Mark Arcand revealed his sister, Bonnie Burns, 48, and his 28-year-old nephew, Gregory Burns, were stabbed to death in their front yard on the James Smith Cree reserve between on Sunday morning.

Burns' other three sons and two foster children were home at the time of the attacks.

"She was protecting her son. She was protecting these three little boys. This is why she's a hero. She's a true matriarch," Arcand said of his slain sister.

Dayson Burns, 13, was stabbed in the neck but survived, and another young boy in the home hid behind a high chair watching the violence unfold, Arcand said.

© RAW 2022

Payroll jobs have fallen for the second month in a row largely due to workers catching COVID and other winter illnesses.

The 0.8 per cent fall in August follows a 0.6 per cent drop in July.

"The slightly lower number of payroll jobs continued to reflect the ongoing impacts of short-term employee absences from COVID and other illnesses during winter, within a tight labour market," Australian Bureau of Statistics head of labour statistics Lauren Ford said.

ABS data also showed the trade balance falling in July despite a strong performance in the June quarter.

The balance on goods and services fell from $17.1b in June to $8.7b in July.

The 9.9 per cent fall in exports was led by a drop in coal, coke and briquettes, as well as metal ores and minerals.

Imports lifted by 5.2 per cent to $46.5b for the month.

In the June quarter, strong exports and slowing imports made a one percentage point contribution to real GDP growth.

The soaring cost of living remains a big issue, but Treasurer Jim Chalmers has indicated there will not be any further relief in the federal budget, warning more spending could be "counterproductive".

Dr Chalmers warned Australians to brace for tougher times ahead and said the government was balancing relief against rising inflation and rates.

"The last thing we want to do is to provide that cost of living relief in a way that's counterproductive and just costs people more in the end," he told ABC radio.

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe is due to speak about where the economy is headed and the role of monetary policy on Thursday.

Dr Lowe's speech follows another rate hike this week, the fifth in a row, in an effort to tame soaring inflation.

He has made it clear there will be more rate hikes in coming months, although noted the bank was "not on a pre-set path".

The Greens and Nationals senator Matt Canavan have called for the central bank boss to resign because he promised rates would not start rising until 2024.

Dr Chalmers said it wasn't up to him to "take pot shots at Phil Lowe".

"People will rightly ask the governor questions about the recent decisions and recent language," he said.

"My job is to get the system right and also to focus on the things that the government can have an influence on."

Commonwealth Bank economists expect the 50 basis point rise on Tuesday to be the last supersized hike in this tightening cycle, and expect a 25 basis point increase in October to take the cash rate to 2.60 per cent.

But economists believe there's a chance the cash rate will reach 2.85 per cent by the end of the year.

While rate hikes did little to dampen growth figures in June - with GDP lifting by 0.9 per cent in the June quarter - economists expect the impacts of policy tightening to show up in the following quarter.

© AAP 2022