Going by the Tuesday-released minutes of the May 4 meeting of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the interest rates in Australia are apparently "well placed for the present;" after the interest rate hike this month - marking the third hike in interest rates this year.

At the meeting, the policy rate by the RBA was increased by a quarter percentage point to 4.5 percent - which was the sixth interest hike move by the country's central bank ever since Australia became the first `Group of 20' country to raise rates in October 2009.

Elucidating the interest rate hike, the minutes of the RBA meeting went thus: "Members judged it to be prudent to undertake some further monetary tightening at this meeting;" and "if lenders responded as expected to another raise in the policy cash rate, interest rates faced by most borrowers would then be at around their average levels over the past decade."

As per the meeting minutes, the members, elaborating their rationale behind the hike, said that "some early signs" had seemingly started affecting consumer behavior - clearly reflected by the somewhat retrained retail sales and a noticeable plunge in housing loan approvals.

After the release of the meting minutes, the S&P/ASX 200 was trading down 0.3 percent; and one Australian dollar bought 87.30 US cents, which was marginally lower from the levels witnessed ahead of the release.