Inspired by an AskUK reddit post, what is cheaper to buy in Australia than overseas?
First thing off the top of my head is our artificially stasis-locked Coles/Woolies milk prices.
Edit: Since the genuine answer in real $ is going to be.. nothing, I'll rephrase the question to what is cheaper relative to our mean/median income than in other countries?
Even though I think Apple products are expensive, Australia has some of the lowest priced Apple products in the world.
I don't think Australia is the cheapest of any country to buy any goods but some products are cheap when we consider purchasing power of our medium salary.
Its actually fairly close to the US price though Apple products are heavily discounted at times in the US
I did say some of the cheapest, not the cheapest.
Also depends of the currency but they can be cheaper than the US at times… it also depends on which state in the US you buy them too as sales tax varies from state to state.
to clarify I'm actually agreeing with you
I smashed my Apple Watch, went to buy a new one in Germany. Proceeded to cry.
I would have cried when I smashed it.. lol
What was the price difference and did you end up buying it in Germany?
I wanted to!
We have Saturn here (think JB).
An Apple Watch se at
Saturn -$480
JB HiFi - $400
Apple Watch 6
Saturn - $690
JB - $580
So about 20%
Both prices on sale.
I did but because they are super handy, paying, directions, maps, messages, music.
To repair the screen was going to be $460au
@smpantsonfire: Which did you end up getting?
How long is battery life?
I'm thinking of getting one for my wife but will have to change telco's because she is on pre-paid.
Really, even though we have GST here?
GST in Germany is a lot higher, at least 17% with some EU countries nearing 30%
iPhones generally the exception there, also when you get to high end/customised Macs and especially Mac Pros. Wasn't always the case, doesn't seem that long ago we kept going on about the 'Australia Tax' when it came to Apple products, but looks like they got the message.
Turkish Netflix and Indian YouTube.
fist bump
From an Asia perspective:
Good quality beef and lamb
Good cheese, and olives
Actually good chocolate and junk food like Tim Tams and chips (e.g. Tim Tams here $2 a packet on special while in Malaysia around 15rm with their minimum wage being 5rm an hour and average income around 2000-3000rm a month)
Pizza and fast food in general (I mean franchised like KFC, Dominos etc)
Canned food like soups, pasta sauce (a weird one, I know)
Wine
Sometimes seafood depending on what and where
Apples and oranges
Fresh Milk
Petrol and cars
Streaming services
Shoes and technology (when we have sales)
Note this is also from a purchasing power perspective. Some of these items might cost the same in Asian countries (sometimes less, sometimes more) but compared to the average salary, you're working a lot more for it. It wouldn't make sense to compare just absolute prices, sure something might be half as much in a country but if you're earning on average 5x less then what's the point.
Excellent point and in line with how I approached this question when I asked myself. I've updated the OP to rephrase it according to relative spending power.
These guys have a point.
If you look at just house prices, you'll get a flawed picture. If you look at median house prices vs median income, again it won't be a full picture. Once you add up something like 10-yearly expenditure, then do a more apples-to-pears, you get a better picture.
But then there will always be the tangible things: quality of the air, water cleanness, fairness of the law, outdoor activities, access to goods/services, weather, culture, holidays, people's temperament, etc etc. You can never get a proper comparison, and it gets less accurate as you compare to more different areas.
One thing you should do first, is to scratch the idea of countries from your head. And look to comparing city to city. Comparing Melbourne to Alice Springs is far less accurate than comparing it to Sydney. And comparing say capital cities between Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Finland is also more accurate, than say comparing any of those to Melbourne. And even less accurate if you're comparing it to New Delhi. So you have to be careful in how to draw conclusions.
From a Philippines perspective, I couldn’t have explained it better. In comparison to the average wage, the cost of living is very expensive. As an example, my family own a chicken farm and sell eggs for P5 each. That is roughly $2 for a dozen. On the average wages, one would have to work over half an hour to buy a dozen eggs.
Pizza and fast food in general (I mean franchised like KFC, Dominos etc)
These are cheaper elsewhere though.
Yeah but in SE Asia I always found them expensive compared to other food i could buy
agree . coming from south east asia.
quality beef, oz wine, nougat, pandora, muesli, oat
blackmore, vitamins, (almost anything from chemistwarehouse)
these stuffs are exported to asia/south east asia at a premium price
Yeah all the muesli bars we get for $2 haha, vitamins is another big one, even when you don't even factor in exchange rates and stuff. I guess they're the same rrp usually but no one buys them for rrp here.
Yup, coming from a slightly less developed country than Australia, every single beef and lamb product is sold by the 100gs instead of per kg. Most of our meat comes from South America, South-East Asia or USA or Australia. Could sometimes be about just under 1.5 hours of min wage labour for 1kg of chicken breast
Vegemite
Fruit. We never appreciate how cheap it is in Australia until you go to a place like Japan and find out 2 apples cost $5.
but at least in the bottom floor of the depaato, it is packaged so beautifully…
I remember in Tokyo seeing massive crowds around trucks on the street occasionally. Once close I realised they were selling fresh fruit and people were going crazy. The closest I got to a banana was in cake found at Lawsons.
In some countries it is free; people just pick it from the trees as they need it.
Yeah in Australia it's surprisingly easy to eat healthy for cheap but also super easy to eat junk food for cheap.
Yeah holy crap even in Hawaii, fresh fruit and veggies were a ton. No wonder Americans are fat and eat cheap junk food coz their fresh food is real expensive.
I bought a water melon in Japan for $80…
Disagree. There are many countries in EU where fruits are 3 to 4 times cheaper and most importantly - taste better.
Yes, particularly cherries, custard apples, mangoes and some berries. They are so expensive here compared to EU/ India/ US. Cheap here in my opinion: Oranges, Lemons, Strawberries, Watermelon (when on sale), Avocados.
Exactly the fruits I was thinking about!
@polstralian: Cherries here are $10-$15/kg even at the peak of the season. Custard apples are $10+/ kg most of the times. Papaya is $4+/ kg. Bananas are $4/ kg normally. Mangoes are ridiculously expensive even though Aus grows a lot. I wonder who finds these cheap keeping in mind the average wages, high property prices (and hence low disposable income).
Lockdowns in VIC
getting costly lately
.
Coal?
Raw iron?
Uranium.
Water.
Only if you are a giant off-shore multinational with Bruz in your pocket.
do you mean bottled water? If you mean tap water i’d say it is very expensive when you look at the water bill as a whole. For water consumption of around $30-40 you pay around 200-250+ after all the surcharges
Beaches.
In some countries, you have to pay to visit the best beaches.
Some places you have to pay to visit ordinary beaches.
Yeah it wouldn't work here because we have so many to choose from.
And if you are prepared to wander so many secluded ones. Although I would be, very, careful where I, actually, swam. The dangers of Australia are overstated but, if you aren’t careful, you can come a cropper.
There has already been a private "beach club" on the beach at Glenelg SA, which was apparently popular, and the mayor of Gold Coast was promoting similar bars on the beaches there. You can only access those facilities if paying.
On the other hand, Linfox boss Lindsay Fox continues to claim he has ownership of his 'private' beach at Portsea Vic.
@GG57: I guess it probably depends on the definition of "on the beach". The basic rule is that anything that the water touches at the highest tide of the year is crown land. If you previously owned land, and erosion caused the beach to infringe on it then unfortunately you've just lost your land - the government now owns it. Of course there is a lot of "beach" which is above the highest tide in places like the Gold Coast.
@macrocephalic: I think the Lindsay Fox's argument is that the high tide mark has receded (due to sand build up in that area) and therefore his land ownership should extend further than previously.
It has been going on for years, and to the credit of the local council he has had to make changes in regards to his pool location, and allow a public path to continue. Maybe it is just a game to him.
@GG57: Disgusting isn’t it. If I was a local I would make a point of picnicking on that stretch of beach as often as possible to stop him taking it.
Disgusting pay to win systems!
You have to pay a lot for parking at many popular beaches in Australia
Rode products
Stealth Electric Bikes
South Melbourne Market Dim Sims
I bought my last Rode mic from the UK, it was cheaper to ship here than to buy here.
Pizza - especially Dominos
It's crazy that you can get a pizza enough to feed a couple of people for $7.
What is this?
A pizza for ANTZ!
Is my reaction everytime i get dominos.
I can't include anything not done in a traditional pizza oven under the label of "pizza". How is it that so many people have such low pizza standards?
I make my pizzas in my airfryer. Using nana lebanese bread from woolies as the base. Sacrilegiously delicious!
I've never seen a nice thin crust base bubble like it does in a real pizza oven though
Are you gate keeping pizza?
Oh if I was we wouldn't have Dominos or Pizza hut that's for sure
Yep, Dominos in the UK charge £15+ for comparable pizzas, crazy
Definitely not internet lol.
Check out Canadian mobile data costs.
Aussie mobile data is pretty cheap globally, and NBN is not too bad either, especially if you consider purchasing parity.
The real crime is the lack of high bandwidth and symmetric connectivity.
You forgot data caps.
I know everyone uses them, but their sole purpose is to allow vendors to oversell bandwidth.
Of course they oversell bandwidth - they're not going to give you a 1:1 contention ratio. What's more interesting is that as data caps increase (for fixed lines) they've essentially become meaningless. The majority of plans are 1TB/month or unlimited. At this point they're basically unlimited for most uses. I actually can't even remember what my plan is because it's been years since I came close to hitting it - and I'm someone who falls asleep streaming media most nights.
Relative to our asian neighbours the NBN and mobile service is pretty trash in both bandwidth and cost.
Not disagreeing but you have to consider the infrastructure costs in Australia vs population density.
Much easier/cheaper to service 25M people if Australia was the size of Tasmania.
Of course there are many parts of Australian that NBN and mobile service is not available, but consider that Singapore has 8,000 people per sq/km, Australia- 3 lol
Even our most densely populated city- Greater Sydney has a population density of 430 people per sq/km.
@JimB: Yeah i do agree with that. those in the city are subsidising those in rural areas which is fair enough and the infrastructure cost is much more. Although you do have African and third world nations which have much faster network speeds for a fraction of the price.
Pity the bastardised NBN result is neither futureproofed or good value for money for anyone.
5G is almost ready to replace it in many cases.
African and third world nations which have much faster network speeds for a fraction of the price
Usually big business subsidized to get access to the cheaper labour rates.
@Drakesy: I didn't realise Africa had faster internet. I know Nigeria needs fast broadband for all the scamming they do lol..
Australia is below average but isn't too bad according to https://www.speedtest.net/global-index - ranked 53 globally with 85.32Mbps.
Though it may be skewed because people with basic internet, i.e. 20 or 50Mbps aren't the ones running speed tests to confirm there internet speeds.
Me- I'm on 50Mbps which is sufficient today for my families needs.
While I think we pay too much for broadband, surprisingly Australia is middle of the road when it comes to average internet prices (but below average when it comes to speed) in the OECD https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-costs-compared…
@Drakesy: Wasnt good value for the Government either. Cost tens of billions for NBN infrastructure for a temporary bump over ADSL 2. Society is really paying a very high price for it.
@JimB: Also pretty easy to service people if you just run a new cable from post to post every time you need it. The cabling in most SE Asian countries is a nightmare.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Tea-Leaves/Bangkok-gr…
@macrocephalic: Structural wires lol
Imagine trying to fix the wiring if the pole came down and then finding out who is responsible to fix it.
Emu Burgers (Parachilna Prairie Hotel)
Free extended warranties via ACL
Wine
No way.
Even if you qualified that and said that Australian wine is cheaper here, I've bought Aust wine overseas cheaper than here, as it didn't include some of the taxes, marketing costs, and other add-ons.
And, obviously, if you wanted to look at daily quaffers, no way would you compare with the prices in Europe.
Especially when you go into a Cost Plus store that has no idea on the various Penfold labels and sells them at, roughly, the same price. No Grange, unfortunately. We drank, very, well for a few days.
Tax on wine isn't very high here because it's a percentage of the wholesale price rather than a fixed tax. Thus why you can get Bowlers Run for $3 a bottle or 4L casks for $10, because the wholesale price is basically nothing, you're paying more in GST.
Despite pretty much everything being cheaper in America than here, in the US there's a federal tax of $1.07US, a state tax that varies ($0.20 in California) then sales tax on top. Impossible to get a bottle for under $5 there.
Even Europe can be higher, in the UK tax on a bottle of wine is 4 euro. There are some countries that have no wine tax though but even the 19% sales tax in Germany would make wine prices hard to compete with Aussie ones.
Now if you want to talk the quality of wine you get for your dollar… yeah, different story.
Certain perfumes in Chemist Warehouse are far cheaper than elsewhere.
Pandora Jewellery! A lot of people tend to bulk buy here and resell in other countries.
Vitamins from CWH
Panadol/Ibuprofen. A lot cheaper in some countries but compared to our incomes, very cheap. 99c for 100, awesome. Go and buy 100 advil in the US and it's like $20.
This!
My cousin is a doctor in Singapore and when she came here for a conference she had a long list of vitamins and paracetamol to buy for her friends.
Not true. The Costco has 1000 Ibuprofen for $10 in American
https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-ibuprofen-200-mg.%…
sorry but that is wrong. I always stock up with one of their 500 or 1000 tablet bottles on a few items while in the US as it is so much cheaper, especially for things like Panadol/Ibuprofen.
I'm pretty sure (very sure) they are put out as loss leaders by retailers and chains in AU - $0.69c Chemist Warehouse Panamax is the classic example.
Umm coal?
All serousness, what do you mean by overseas. TVs are cheaper here than India for one. Most people of India is poor, they can't afford a 55" LED TV.
Sadly, yes coal. Uranium as well.
Vegemite
Yellow tail wine (thats if you want to bother)
Paw paw cream or whatever that crap is in the red tube
Most Aussie branded products…
According to Chinese - properties!
'Yellow tail wine' Cheaper in the US.
Not last time I was there and looked…
$7 a bottle in AU from DM's…
$15-$20 USD when I was last in LA!
I rang Joe and told him I was raising prices on the services we were providing them… lol…
Doubt it was $15-$20 for Yellow Tail, unless it was on the wine list at a restaurant. Most US supermarkets its $4-$8
even in Walgreens over their the standard price is around $5-$6 US. $15-$20US is a huge rip off.
@gromit: Granted - it was (what appeared to be) a private/ small bottleo in DTLA…
Regardless $8 USD is still more than we pay for that stuff here in AU, as one would expect.
I've seen it in EU also (Paris and Rome), was years ago. Can't remember what the price was then. Seem to remember it being higher than AU.
Anyways…
Chinese don't buy our properties because they are cheap, they buy them because their wealth won't be confiscated. It's insurance, they don't care how much it costs as long as they can get the money out again
@Smol Cat: It is really. It also makes super Sunday that much more enjoyable.