The latest inflation figures showed a jump in the growth of average prices from 3.6% to 3.8%. But they also indicate just how much our economy is caught up in the ramifications of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, which sent gas prices higher – and with it our electricity prices.

The October consumer price index figures were a turning point for data in Australia. It marks the change of the official CPI figures going from quarterly to monthly. This is pretty much the biggest data shift since the labour force figures back in 1978 did the same switch from quarterly to monthly.

The move is a good one, given most nations in the OECD measure prices monthly. It gives the Reserve Bank and the government more regular information.

For a number of years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics had been testing measuring inflation monthly, but it left out a few things while it worked out how to count everything. As a result, the latest figures are slightly different from the old monthly figures:

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On the old measure, inflation was slightly lower than the new official measure.

This is also reflected with the “trimmed mean” measure of underlying inflation. While the old monthly figures suggested underlying........

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