The worst lettuce now costs $5.50

The Rob Kardashian of vegetables is now more expensive than a coffee

The Rob Kardashian of vegetables is now more expensive than a coffee

Inflation in Australia is a red hot 5.1%.

The cost of living here has accelerated like a P-plater at the lights, lifting from 3.5% over the last 12-months.

This explains the reason why it may feel like we're living in an episode of Sex and The City right now, a place where the concept of money doesn't match up with reality.

A place where being out here just trying to live feels like we're fighting for Harry Styles tickets.

Every. Damn. Day.

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#greenscreensticker Here’s why everything is so expensive right now

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Because demand for goods, services and things is outstripping supply.

That's why we’ve just copped the highest rises in the consumer price index, referred to as the CPI, since the introduction of the GST back in the Y2K days.

Back then, an iceberg lettuce cost about 75 cents. Today at Woolies - the quiet achieving salad base - will set you back $5.50. 

It's starting to feel a lot like a 1923 throwback. A time when a wheelbarrow full of money wouldn't even buy a newspaper during the most fevered moment of the hectic German hyperinflation days.

According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, the price of meat has also been jacked up 6%, bread has increased by 3%, dairy 4% and fruit and veggies are almost 7% more expensive since March last year.

It's all owing to a perfect international price-rise storm of disrupted supply chains, Covid relapses and economic recoveries, floods, other natural disasters and the Russian situation, all on top of people around the country using their savings amassed from being housebound for two years to buy more stuff and build new houses. Not to mention the lack of staff or skilled migrants here, ready and willing to make the stuff and build those houses.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg puts the higher inflation rate - the highest we've seen in 30 years - down to housing, food and transport.

Iceberg is just the tip of the ...iceberg (sorry). Petrol prices have increased 33% in the past year, the biggest single increase since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"Today's inflation numbers are a reminder to Australians that we are living in a complex and volatile environment," Frydenberg said.

The increase is a sign, he said, that Australia was still not immune to the pandemic and highlighted why we can't underestimate the impact the war in Ukraine can have on our way of life in Australia.

"These international inflationary pressures are being felt around the world, but they underline why it's so important to have strong economic management," he said.

Like most trends, Australia has come late to this.

We’ve experienced an annual 5.1% cost of living bump, which is pretty conservative considering in the US they copped an 8.5% hike, 6.2% in the UK and the Kiwi rate is now 6.9%.

We may be a generation painted as people who want to have their cake and eat it too, but it’s getting increasingly harder to even buy the packet mix.