Inflation in Australia: How food prices have changed since 2020

The price of milk, bread and cheese have all inflated by more than 20 per cent in three years, while some other items are cheaper than you’d expect.

Fruit and vegetable prices have risen at roughly half the rate of processed items, a snapshot of

of the consumer crunch has confirmed.

Australia enjoyed a two-decade period of low inflation through the 2000s and 2010s but the advent of the coronavirus period, followed in quick succession by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has fuelled inflation over the past four years.

The price of milk, bread and cheese have all inflated by more than 20 per cent since December 2019, ABS figures confirm.

Thanks largely to Chinese tariffs, wine prices have risen by only 5.2 per cent over the past four years while lamb prices have declined by 8.8 per cent over the same period.

How Australia’s cost of living has changed this decade.

Victorian Farmers Federation livestock president Scott Young said while meat prices had eased for consumers in the past 12 months, Australians were feeling the budgetary blues elsewhere.

“It’s all about what point in time you compare prices to – obviously prices for lamb and beef are cheaper for the consumer now than they were 12 to 18 months ago,” he said.

“These cost-of-living concerns remain because people may be paying better prices for meat but they’re being stretched elsewhere with higher power bills or insurance, just like farmers.

“That has to be remembered in all of this – the cost-of-living pressures faced by all Australians include farmers and we have to cover our rising input costs like anyone else.”

University of Queensland marketing expert Nicolas Pontes echoed Mr Young’s view that shoppers often have short-term memories with pricing.

“Because we make dozens of different purchases every time we enter a supermarket, we only keep track of a few items that we regularly buy,” he said.

“And we only remember pricing through a year or two-year window. So if prices of meat or vegetables were cheaper in 2019 or 2010, that isn’t as fresh in shopper memories.”