The cost of living in Darwin has skyrocketed, with inflation higher than in any other Australian capital city, new figures show.
Consumer Price Index figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday show the cost of living in Darwin shot up 3.9 per cent since June last year, making it’s rise one-and-a-half times faster than Sydney’s, the next highest at 2.6 per cent.
The national average rise was 2.4 per cent.
Leader of the Northern Territory (NT) Opposition, Delia Lawrie, said the increase was due to rises in electricity prices and the squeeze on the housing market.
Businesses were hurting, with some 4500 people out of jobs since the Country Liberal Party (CLP) came to power, she said.
“We need to stimulate the housing market, which brings good construction business, good jobs and will lower the inflation we’re seeing,” she told reporters in Darwin on Wednesday.
Ms Lawrie said the high inflation figures follow on from this week’s Commsec report that showed the NT was the only place in Australia where real wages were dropping and ABS figures that show Darwin is the only place in Australia where power prices increased in the last quarter.
Ms Lawrie said increasing rents were the biggest contributor to the NT’s high inflation rate.
“Under the Country Liberal Party rents have increased at nearly three times the national rate and the cost of buying a house is increasing at twice the national rate,” Ms Lawrie said.
She said it was inevitable that it would begin to drive people away from the Territory, as the number of new houses being built has dropped by 42.5 per cent in the last quarter.
But Chief Minister Adam Giles said the NT has the highest level of new housing activity, a sign his government is trying to drive down housing costs.
He blamed the carbon tax for the region’s high cost of living.
“It’s putting up the cost of living in the NT more than anywhere else in Australia, particularly with the cost of diesel fuel,” he said.
“Nearly everything comes up by road or by rail and the cost of diesel, which has gone up by seven cents a litre from the first of July, is really starting to hurt Territorians.”
He challenged Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to remove carbon tax effects on diesel in the NT.
