Ms Bullock (pictured) told a parliamentary committee it is premature to be thinking about rates cuts this year as "inflation is still too high".
The comments come despite markets pricing in a drop in the cash rate by December.
Ms Bullock acknowledged it's not news that households want to hear but made no apologies for the RBA's stance on inflation.
"Those with mortgages are feeling the squeeze on their cash flows from the increase in interest rates over the past couple of years," she told the House of Representatives economic committee on Friday.
"But the alternative of higher inflation for longer is much worse."
Progress on inflation "very slow"
Ms Bullock reiterated the RBA's slower-than-expected timeframe for inflation coming into target, outlined after the RBA board meeting earlier this month.
She said while inflation peaked at 7.8% in the December 2022 quarter and moderated to 4.1% at the end of 2023, it had only declined a further 0.3% to 3.8% by the June 2024 quarter.
Ms Bullock told the committee that progress on further reducing inflation has been "very slow".
The forecasts set out in the RBA's latest Statement on Monetary Policy are for inflation to return to the target range of 2-3% only by late 2025 and approach the midpoint in 2026.
This is six months down the track of the central bank's previous forecast.
Government spending not "the main game"
Once again, Ms Bullock refused to be drawn on whether recent government spending had fuelled inflationary pressure in the economy.
She diplomatically insisted it was "not the main game at the moment".
Many economists and commentators say big-spending federal and state government budgets, including generous energy rebates, will drive up inflation in the long run.
This is despite them possibly having a dampening effect in the shorter term as energy costs are included in the basket of goods and services used to measure CPI inflation.
But Ms Bullock refused to be drawn into political agendas, saying it was not her job to tell governments what to do and government spending was only one factor that led the bank to revise its inflation forecasts.
She said she was more worried about uncertainties around consumer spending, home building, and international trade.
However the diplomatic commentary is at odds with the RBA's forecasting.
In its latest forecasts, the RBA believes public demand will increase by 4.3% in the year to December 2024 – almost three times as high as its previous forecast of 1.5%.
This has coincided with the RBA pushing out its midpoint inflation timeline by another six months to the end of 2026; inflation likely won't hit 2.5% until 2027.
Home building costs driving inflation
Ms Bullock singled out home building costs climbing at a rate of 5% a year as making it more difficult to bring inflation under control.
She cited labour shortages and costs for some materials as driving goods price inflation in Australia higher than in overseas markets.
Ms Bullock also suggested government-funded infrastructure projects were draining resources from the residential construction sector, particularly high-density housing developments.
She said the RBA was hearing competition from the government sector meant it was more difficult to get staff and trades for home building, further blowing out home construction timelines.
What does it mean for the home loan market?
In a sign mortgage holders may be losing hope of a rates cut in 2024, there's been a recent uptick in new loans being taken out at fixed rates.
Fixed rate lending fell to record lows earlier this year - under 2% of new loans by value - with borrowers holding out for a widely forecast rates drop this year.
But according to the latest ABS data, fixed rate lending is on the rise again, up to 2.6% of new housing lending.
A number of lenders have been dropping fixed home loan rates of late, perhaps trying to entice borrowers to lock in at lower rates while they wait for variable rates to fall.
But guessing what the market will do is never straightforward.
Australia's largest home lender Commonwealth Bank of Australia remains the outlier in predicting there will be a cut to the cash rate in November.
The other big three banks have now all pushed out their forecasts to 2025.
Photo supplied by RBA
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