The Reserve Bank has left interest rates on hold at 3.6 per cent, as widely expected.

The decision to keep rates steady follows last week's surprise news that inflation jumped much higher in the September quarter than the RBA had been anticipating.

The RBA Board has one more meeting left for this year, scheduled for 8-9 December , and economists say the likelihood of a rate cut occurring at that meeting are practically zero.

There's even talk that the next move in rates may be up , depending on how the economy performs in coming months.

Last week, figures showed inflation surged in the September quarter with consumer prices rising at an annual pace of 3.2 per cent, up from 2.1 per cent in the June quarter.

At the time, the lead economist for Oxford Economics Australia, Ben Udy,

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