Australian Inflation Calculator

Find out what an amount of money was worth in another year. Uses ABS CPI data from 1950 to 2024.

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What did things cost?

To put inflation in perspective, here are some Australian price benchmarks across the decades.

1966 — Decimal Day

On 14 February 1966, Australia replaced pounds, shillings, and pence with dollars and cents. The average Australian house cost about $10,000. In 2024, the national median house price is around $800,000 — an 80× increase in nominal terms, dwarfing the CPI rise of about 18× over the same period.

1980 — The Petrol Price Shock

After the second oil shock, petrol cost roughly 30c per litre. By 2024 Australians pay around $2.00/L — more than 6× as much. CPI-adjusted, it should be about $1.64, meaning petrol has actually risen faster than general inflation. Average weekly earnings in 1980 were about $280; today they're over $1,900.

2000 — Sydney's Property Takeoff

The median Sydney house price in 2000 was $287,000. By 2024 it passed $1.5 million — a 420% rise, against a CPI increase of roughly 103% over the same period. Property has been one of the most inflation-beating assets in Australian history.

🦘 Fun fact: The early 1990s recession ("the recession we had to have") briefly pushed inflation below 2%, but came at the cost of 11% unemployment. The RBA's current 2–3% inflation target emerged from that painful experience.

Why does inflation matter?

Inflation erodes purchasing power — $100 in 2000 bought about twice as much as $100 in 2024. This is why savings left in cash lose real value over time, and why wages, rents, and investments need to be tracked against CPI rather than in raw dollar terms.

Headline CPI: The official ABS measure — a weighted basket of goods and services across Australia's eight capital cities.
Trimmed mean (core) inflation: Strips out volatile items like petrol and fresh food, giving the RBA a cleaner signal for monetary policy decisions.
Real vs. nominal: When wages grow faster than CPI, workers gain real purchasing power. When they don't — as many Australians experienced in 2022–23 — living standards fall in real terms even if take-home pay rises.