Like a rising, unavoidable tide, cost of living increases are applying a vice-like squeeze to south-west Victorians' lives.
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Inflation is running at a 30-year high and wage growth is going nowhere. Compounding these problems are rising energy costs, fuel prices remaining stubbornly expensive and official interest rates at an 11-year peak.
These pressures are generating genuine community frustration; those with busy working lives feel the treadmill of living costs has been turned up to another speed, while those on fixed incomes feel like the treadmill is dragging them backwards.
Corporates are feeling it, too.
A pre-budget economic survey of 161 Australian businesses by international consultants KPMG found around half the firms it spoke to said their margins were being squeezed because of a reduced ability to pass increasing costs through to customers.
A recent supermarket survey by ACM found that even the most basic food items such as washed potatoes had risen 87.5 per cent since 2018.
Toothpaste had gone up 60 per cent, a box of cereal by 58.5 per cent, and every child's favourite, tomato sauce, by 35 per cent,
Non-discretionary spending - essential food items, rent/mortgage payments, energy and work-related travel costs - are taking an ever-increasing chunk out of the weekly wage package. Practical solutions are sorely required. That's why ACM, publisher of The Standard sought advice from the country's top budgeting experts this week and offered some money-saving solutions.
But while we are all tightening our belts, we also need our elected representatives to do the same.
This week Moyne Shire councillors unanimously voted to spend between $6.6m and $7.1m in the next 15 years to keep Port Fairy's Belfast Aquatics centre afloat.
For ratepayers who live outside Port Fairy it may seem inappropriate, even outrageous, especially when the shire warned a community group who built it that it wouldn't be viable in the long-term. The shire provided $400,000 to the construction costs on the condition the group never asked for any further funding. But since then it has granted about $2m to bail it out.
But according to councillors, they have been extensively lobbied to keep the centre open and they are listening to their constituents. In such tight economic times, can the shire afford to prop up an asset it neither owns or manages? Should it consult ratepayers via a survey so it can be assured it is making a decision in the best interests of a majority of residents?
Warrnambool City councillors will on Monday night vote to release next financial year's draft budget, which is forecasting an average rates and charges rise of $75 for home owners.
The council is sticking within the state government's 3.5 per cent rates rise cap but have your wages risen by 3.5 per cent?
The council, even after saving itself from borrowing millions for saleyards works it listed in this year's budget before closing the facility, has bills to pay. It isn't immune from all the price rises listed above and like households, has to make ends meet. But the problem is someone still has to pay and ratepayers will be hit with another rising bill that puts more pressure on the purse strings.