Labor dines out on fictional $100 roast

Barnaby Joyce's infamous "$100 roast" got a fresh serving in parliament during the dying days of the carbon tax.

The impact of the tax on the Sunday joint was one of a shopping basket of items the coalition used in its scare campaign when in opposition.

As the impost teetered on the chopping block this week, Labor returned the favour by using question time to quiz Prime Minister Tony Abbott about the impact abolition of the carbon tax would have on the cost of living.

They also had much fun in reminding the PM of Joyce's dire warning about the likely cost of a carbon-taxed leg of lamb.

Abbott responded by saying if Labor kept voting to keep the "toxic tax" the price would just go "up and up and up".

"Eventually - who knows? Maybe there would have been a $100 leg of lamb," he said.

Inflation figures for the June quarter, due out next week, will provide some insight into this meaty issue.

According to the breakdown of the consumer price index "lamb and goat" prices were actually 1.5 per cent lower in the year to March.

What's more, scroll back to June 2013 - the first anniversary of the carbon tax - prices dropped by 12 per cent over the year.

Of course, the cost of cooking the joint increased: gas prices went up more than 15 per cent and electricity soared by 17 per cent.

Even so, with one major supermarket offering a leg of lamb at less than $9 a kilo this week, $100 does seem something of a porkie or at least foul (or fowl) play.

More so when you consider the carbon tax was due to revert to a market-based emissions trading scheme in 2015.

That would have caused the carbon price to slump from a fixed price of $25.40 a tonne to less than $10 based on current European prices.

It was a case of "down, down, prices are down" - as one ageing rock band sang in an adversitement for major supermarket chain.

More broadly, quarterly consumer price index releases will take on even more importance for many Australians in the coming years following the coalition's government's first budget as a measure of cost of living changes.

The budget has proposed reintroducing twice-yearly indexation on the fuel excise from August 1, after it had been frozen at 38.14 cents in 2001.

The government also plans to index pensions to inflation from September 2017 rather than base increases on weekly wages growth.

Both measures face stiff opposition from Labor, the Greens and some cross benchers.

But it does suggest there will be winners and losers when CPI comes around if and when these measures get through.

In the meantime, a dedicated watcher of price pressures, the Reserve Bank, expects inflation will remain within its two to three per cent target for now.

The minutes of the central bank's latest board meeting released this week suggest next Wednesday's CPI report will not be a trigger to start worrying about higher borrowing costs.

Indeed, the final line of the minutes struck a now familiar tone.

That is, "the most prudent course was likely to be a period of stability in interest rates".

At least that means the status quo of record-low interest rates won't stand in the way of that traditional Sunday feast. Yum.