CANBERRA, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Following are comments by Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens and other officials at the central bank's twice-yearly testimony before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics.

NB: All quotes are Glenn Stevens, unless noted:

RATES:

'I think, at least at the moment, my sense is the appropriate interest rate for the economy's circumstances is in fact the pretty low one we have, not because we face an emergency like we did back then (during global financial crisis), but because we face some other forces of a more slowly evolving nature that combine to mean that the correct rate really is lower than it was a couple of years ago.

'So I'm not uncomfortable with this setting of rates.'

DOLLAR

'I'm a bit surprised it hasn't come down more than it has, so perhaps that part of the transmission has changed a little bit. I think people's changed attitude to debt means that we haven't probably seen quite the pickup in borrowing behaviour that you might expect in the past.

'What we're doing is trying to calibrate the level of the cash rate to give us what we hope will be about the appropriate response taking account of the fact that the exchange rate is behaving a bit differently.'

Keywords: RBA STEVENS/HIGHLIGHTS

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