From regular coffees to Friday night takeaway or a trip to the pub, some of the things many Australians have taken for granted now feel like luxuries.
If the businesses that make up our main streets are struggling, and the people who support them can no longer afford them, what do we stand to lose?
Recently a chicken parmigiana and a pint sat next to one another in a neighbourhood pub beer garden.
The parma, or parmi — a gleaming tide of molten cheese lapping at crispy, salty edges — was picture perfect.
The beer — a locally brewed, independent pale ale — was by no means the most expensive drink on offer.
Their combined cost: $47.
Across Australia, there is a creeping sense that, to borrow modern phraseology, the math isn't mathing.
What might once have fallen into the category of acceptable middle-class consumption now feels closer to luxury.
Two-thirds of the country approach this federal election with concerns aboutthe cost of living, double that of 10 years ago, according to IPSOS monitoring.
Among the 254,376 respondents to the ABC's Vote Compass,the cost of living ranked as the most important issue.
At the same time, pubs, cafes and restaurants, facing the same inflationary pressures, grapple with how to pass rising costs onward to financially stressed customers.
It is a tension causing hospitality businesses to close at a record rate — 9.3 per cent, or one in 11 businesses shut up shop last year — according to a recent CreditorWatch report.
"The person who owns the pub can't afford to pay their basics because everything else has gone up," says Viva Hammer, from the Crawford School of Public Policy Australian National University.
"The customers are also pressed by the same inflation because their basics have gone up, to the extent that the non-essentials are off the table for most people.
"It's disequilibrium — things have gotten out of whack."
Last year, South Australia publican Simone Douglas went somewhat viral, though not on purpose.
"Pub is called out for charging an exorbitant price for its chicken parmigiana — but its owner has hit back with a compelling response," read a typically exuberant headline in the Daily Mail.
Her pub, The Duke of Brunswick in Adelaide, had received negative customer reviews for the $33 price of its chicken parmigiana and salad.
"When food is worth so much, society begins to crumble," read a one-star Google review.
"The staff, both in the kitchen and the business, were pretty demoralised," Douglas says.
She took to the pub's Facebook page to break down the $33 cost and explain just how profitable it was.
"It turns out, not very profitable," she says.
After factoring in the cost of ingredients and everything from rent, wages, payroll tax, and energy, to the serviette that accompanied the meal, Douglas had calculated the profit to be about $2 per plate.
The response to her post was mixed.
The local "mainstay community" praised the transparency. Others were less supportive.
"There were people who said I should go back to business school," Douglas says.
"There were people who may have run pubs in the heyday of the 1970s and 1980s when everyone was making a small fortune that said, 'you're insane.'
"The reality is, they weren't paying the energy prices, they weren't paying the gas prices, the labour costs."
Pubs by their very name and nature — public houses — are intended as places of regular congregation.
"If you can get repeat custom, that's one of the big goals," says Stephen Ferguson, president of the Australian Hotels Association.
The sentiment that the pub is no longer something people can regularly afford is filtering back to him, in more direct ways than he would like.
"My mates, every time they come back from the bar, they give me a gob-full," he laughs.
It is not hard to find hints of frustration or bewilderment at this new normal.
An Instagram reel showing the $22 cost of a pint at a Sydn...
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