The federal government’s temporary cut to the fuel excise ended on September 29, 2022. This saw the fuel tax rate of 46 cents per litre reinstated, up from the temporary cut to 22 cents per litre, which had applied from March 30, 2022.

“This month’s annual movement of 6.9 per cent is lower than the 7.3 per cent movement in September, however CPI inflation remains high,” said Michelle Marquardt, ABS head of prices statistics.

Each year, the ABS updates the expenditure weights applied to the CPI basket. “This is important to ensure the CPI basket remains up to date and representative of current spending by households, particularly when capturing the changes to spending patterns since COVID-19. The update to weights in October saw several changes, the most significant being international travel, which increased from 0.1 per cent of the CPI basket to 1.9 per cent,” said Marquardt.

“Typically, annual updates to the weights have limited impact on the overall CPI. This year, however, the significant changes in spending patterns over 2021 and 2022 meant that the reweight had a larger impact on the CPI than usual. The annual movement of the monthly CPI indicator in October, using the previous weights, would have been 7.1 per cent compared to 6.9 per cent using the new weights,” she added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (NB)