In the 1990's, Paul Keating famously said that the 'inflation stick' had been snapped. There followed on over twenty years of relatively low inflation (save for the bump after the GST was introduced). But the CPI for Australia just released for 21/22 shows the underlying figure at 6.1%.

Inflation has taken off around the world and for many of the same reasons - choked supply chains, the coronavirus, government spending during the coronavirus and so forth. I am not an economist so I speak as the layest of the lay.

Most people probably don't go to the ABS to look at the breakdown of the figures, nor do they read the experts who write for the daily papers. Most of what they get will be from a woeful commercial news service that squeezes footage of of harried shoppers in between infomercials and sports reporting.

But truthfully many folks will be hurting and daily finding ways of making the family budget go further. Unluckier others will be searching for cheaper rents. There is often a human cost to a statistic.

Let's hope that we can locate that stick again - and who doesn't like a stick - and snap it for perpetuity.