High prices are a serious problem in Australia. In a previous blog, I wrote about how high rents were, but they’re still going up. The rent on my home went up by about 40,000 yen a month in April. In Japan, even if the price of a food item rises by 10 or 20 yen it’s reported in the news, but in Australia, such price increases aren’t reported because the sizes of the increases are nothing like that. In the past two years, the price of potato chips has risen by 150 to 200 yen per bag from about 350 yen, and now costs 500 to 600 yen per bag. Rent, food, and daily necessities are rising rapidly, and everyone is wondering how to live with such price rises. I think Australians tend not to save as much as Japanese people do. Plus, I think there are many households with a high ratio of rent or home loan to income, so in that case, they can’t spend the money they have saved, and the challenge becomes a question of how to reduce daily living expenses.
Amidst these high prices, the government and various institutions are taking measures to reduce the stress on people even a little. Australia's minimum wage rose from AU$23.23 to AU$24.10 on July 1 this year. And some income taxes will decrease from the current fiscal year, 2024-2025.
The federal and state governments have also subsidized electricity bills as part of their measures against high prices, and Queensland is providing AU$1,000 worth of electricity bill subsidies to households in the current year (2024-2025). In Australia, you are free to choose your electricity company, so the electricity companies allocate these subsidies as AU$1,000 worth of credit to each customer. You can also choose your own payment frequency, for example, paying by the month or once every 3 months, but the subsidy is provided until you use up the whole AU$1,000. By the way, the electricity bill for my home would probably be around $130 (about 13,000 yen) for one month, without air conditioning, not using gas, working from home, and living with one other person in a place with 2 bedrooms, a living room, dining room, and kitchen. For the last 2 and a half years or so I've been living alone and it's about $95 (9,500 yen) a month. In Japanese yen, $1,000 is about 100,000 yen, so this subsidy is very helpful because it means you don't have to pay about 10 months' worth of electricity bills for your home.

At the same time, a survey has found that trust in Australia's largest supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, is declining. The reason is that despite the already high prices, they have been steadily raising the prices of groceries and in 2024 recorded their highest profits ever. Complaints from consumers have been growing louder, saying that the supermarkets have been riding this wave of high prices and raising prices too much.
Australians don't save much and tend not to be good at being frugal, but at the same time, it's also true that most Australians are generous-minded, happy with rough estimates, and don't care too much about finer details. In Australia, large vehicles such as 4WDs are popular despite their poor fuel efficiency, and although they do cook at home, they probably eat out and get food delivered via Uber Eats more often than households in Japan. It’s common to get a loan for a large purchase like a car. In fact, in some cases it’s more difficult to borrow money if you don't have any loans at all, even from a bank or other financial institution. However, if you don't manage well with the current high prices, you could end up with the problem of having difficulty repaying your loan. I think I might keep an eye on developments around how people cope, and whether more people prioritize their spending and take steps to cope with the high prices, like cooking at home and saving electricity.