Expensive eggs, rental rises, falling fuel costs: what we learned from the ABS April inflation report

The Guardian

2 days ago

There are high hopes among economists that 2025 will mark the year we got inflation under control.
We shouldn't get too complacent but consumer price growth is back below 3%, and according to the Reserve Bank of Australia is going to settle at around its official target of 2.5% over the coming year.
But beneath the calm surface, the Australia Bureau of Statistics' consumer price report for April shows some wild swings in prices, and not all are good.
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So before you pop the champagne (alcoholic drinks up 2.9% since April 2024) and break out the chips (snacks and confectionary up 5.4%) and cheese (up only 0.3%), let's take a look at the movers and shakers in the latest inflation data.
Did not knowing the price of eggs cost Peter Dutton the election?
Maybe not, but Dutton's guess in a debate during the campaign that a dozen eggs cost $4.20 instantly branded him out of touch with Australians.
The ABS figures confirm what the rest of us know: eggs are in short supply and expensive, with prices up 19% in the year to April.
The high prices are the result of bird flu ravaging chicken farms in the second half of 2024, which has led to a big drop in availability of eggs.
Experts say the situation may not be fully resolved until later this year, and we could be paying $1 an egg at some stage.
It's never been a better time to have chickens in your back yard, or to be vegan.
The new inflation figures shows rental costs are still rising at a fair clip: up 5% in the year to April.
Pressures are easing, though, as rental vacancy rates pick up from their lowest in history. The most recent annual increase is the weakest since February 2023, the ABS says.
Still, you are still much more likely to cop a rent rise than before the pandemic, and it's likely to be larger, the figures show.
Annual rent changes are being applied to 73% of existing tenants, compared to 28% in 2019, and 83% of new tenants, against 33%.
A separate ABS report on the rental market shows that at the peak in 2023, three in four new tenants were paying rents that were more than 10% higher than the previous occupant.
The data shows how a majority of landlords took advantage of the lowest vacancy rates in history to increase their rental profits when many Australians were struggling with cost of living pressures.
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If you stayed put you were less likely to get whacked with a 10%-plus rental increase, but it still happened to four in 10 tenants in the period of mid-to-late 2023 and early 2024.
It's not all bad news for consumer prices, and a major bright spot for motorists is falling fuel costs.
Automotive fuel prices are down 12% in the year to April, and 4% lower than at the start of 2024.
The average weekly price for petrol in cities in the week to Sunday was $1.70, according to the Australian Institute of Petroleum, compared to $1.83 in early June 2024 (which is as far back as the AIP's figures go on their website).
The figures may help explain why the Coalition's promised cut to the fuel excise failed to resonate.
The other major cost of living relief comes in the form of cheaper household power bills, at least against this time last year.
Electricity costs are down 6.5% in the year to April, the ABS figures show – in no small part due to the series of taxpayer-funded energy bill rebates courtesy of the commonwealth and state and territory governments. They include the $300 federal rebate delivered in quarterly instalments through 2024-25.
If it hadn't been for this support, electricity prices would have been 1.5% higher in the year to April, the ABS said.
Still, as the chart below shows, power bills are rising as these rebates roll off. Labor has promised another $150 rebate in the second half of this year.