Our reading of data from the ABS consumer price index. Spot an error? Tell us at hello@adatastory.com.
A dollar's worth of shopping in the September quarter of 1948 cost $39.50 in the June quarter of 2026, on Australia's consumer price index. Not everything kept pace: since 1980, a dollar's worth of TVs and computers has become 4.3 cents. Prices since 1948 in Australia's capital cities, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
In the December quarter of 1951, prices were 25.6% higher than a year earlier, the fastest rise since the index began in 1948. The 1970s came next: 17.5% in the year to the March quarter of 1975, and 10.6% a year on average across the decade to December 1980. From the March quarter of 1990, prices took 28 years to double; from the March quarter of 1970, they took seven.
Since 1991 the fastest rise was 7.9%, in the year to the December quarter of 2022. Prices were lower than a year earlier in only five quarters, the last in mid-2020. On the ABS's new monthly measure, they rose 4.0% in the year to August 2026, up from 3.5% in the year to July.
The ABS splits the basket into 11 groups. Seven of them go back to the September quarter of 1972, and since then prices overall rose 13.3 times. Alcohol and tobacco rose 39.0 times, housing 15.9, food and non-alcoholic drinks 14.2 and transport 11.8. Furnishings and household equipment (7.1), clothing and footwear (5.5) and communication (2.7), which covers post, phones and internet, all fell behind.
The other four groups start later. Education, from 1982, rose 13.7 times while prices overall rose 4.79 times. Health, from 1989, rose 5.18 times against 2.72. Recreation and culture rose 1.77 times over the same years, and insurance and financial services, from 2005, 1.75 times against 1.78.
Tobacco's index was 0.49 in the September quarter of 1972 and 104.23 in the June quarter of 2026: between 210.6 and 214.9 times as much (the range allows for rounding in the 1972 figure). Prices overall rose 13.3 times, so against everything else in the basket tobacco became 16.0 times as dear. Alcoholic drinks rose 14.3 times, close to the average.
Much of the rise is recent. Tobacco excise went up 25% on 29 April 2010, then 12.5% on 1 December 2013 and on 1 September every year from 2014 to 2020. From the September quarter of 2013 to the December quarter of 2020, tobacco's index rose 180%; prices overall rose 13%. Since the end of 2009 it has risen 6.6 times, and 10.9% in the past year. A chart like this shows timing, not cause.
The ABS's class for audio, visual and computing equipment stood at 2,276.45 in the September quarter of 1980 and 99.01 in June 2026: 0.043 times as much. It fell to half its 1980 level by the December quarter of 1999 and to a tenth by the June quarter of 2011. Since the September quarter of 2020 it has fallen just 4%. Over the same years, $1 of everything in the basket became $5.54.
This is not a shelf price. The ABS adjusts these prices for quality, so a machine that does more for the same money counts as cheaper. Telephone and internet equipment and services rose 1.30 times since 1980; postal services rose 6.18 times.