Homeowners are unlikely to face an interest rate rise next month with Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens indicating the official cash rate will stay on hold for "some time".

Mr Stevens made the comments before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics this morning, where he was forced to defend the RBA's decision to raise the cash rate by 25 basis points earlier this month.

The cash rate rise prompted all four major banks to lift their rates above the RBA's increase and their actions drew widespread condemnation from the public and both sides of politics.

Mr Stevens told the committee that the cash rate was at "about the right level" for now.

The November rise was not expected by most analysts who were also wrong-footed in October when the RBA kept rates on hold.

Labor MP Craig Thomson put to Mr Stevens that the RBA had been "trigger happy" in November, but Mr Stevens said this was not the case.

"On balance the way we came down was that in October we personally didn't think the case was quite made but I was persuaded we were across the line in November," he said.

"I can't think of very many cases in history where we've looked back and thought 'yep we tightened too soon'. I can think of several where we look back and think should have tightened a bit earlier."

While Mr Stevens acknowledged that increases in the RBA cash rate were hurting homeowners more than they used to, he said that was due to the higher amount of debt people now had.

"That of course is why the interest rate moves we do today we agonise over. Should we do 25 [basis points] or not and which month it is - it's not that many years ago when routinely it was 100 points or even 200 in my memory," he said.

After the RBA rate rise the Commonwealth Bank raised its rate by 45 basis points, ANZ by 39, NAB by 43 and Westpac by 35 points.

Mr Stevens said the RBA anticipated that the banks would move higher than 25 basis points.

"The question is really whether all those people with a mortgage are paying seriously higher rates than they should be from an economic management point of view and what I'm saying is, I don't think they are," he said.

"Because we've pretty much offset the change in the margins with doing different things in the cash rate than we would have done had the margins not lifted."

Mr Stevens also defended the banks' actions.

"If my choice is between banks with good profits and banks with no profits, I choose the former every time from an overall macro-economic point of view," he said.

"People look at the overall size of profits in billions but we need to be careful not to forget the size of capital that's invested in these institutions."