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3.4.3 CPI indexation for cost of living

Context

Court orders and court registered agreements or child support agreements often contain clauses providing for an annual adjustment of the amount payable in accordance with changes in the CPI.

Act references

CSRC Act section 4, section 37

CSA Act section 5, Part 6, Part 7

Treatment of CPI clauses

If a court order or court registered agreement provides for a review of the amount payable on a specified date, the arrival of that date is an affecting event (CSRC Act section 4(1)).

An order or child support agreement with a CPI clause will generally state the date on which the comparison is to be made and the particular figures to be used (for example, the weighted average of CPI figures in all capital cities or a specific capital city). Where an order simply refers to CPI, but not a specific measure of it, the Registrar will use the weighted average of CPI in all capital cities from the corresponding quarter of the previous year. The ABS publishes these figures.

For historical CPI values please see topic 2.4.14.

CPI figures

The relevant CPI figures published by the ABS for the most recent year are provided below.

Period Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide Perth Hobart Darwin Canberra Weighted
average
Mar 2024 137.7 137.5 139.2 138.1 134.8 138.1 132.4 135.6 137.4
Dec 2023 136.4 136.1 137.7 137.1 134.0 136.8 131.5 134.3 136.1
Sep 2023 135.8 135.3 137.0 136.2 132.0 135.8 130.9 133.7 135.3
Jun 2023 134.0 133.5 136.0 133.9 131.5 134.6 129.7 132.7 133.7
Mar 2023 132.7 132.7 134.6 132.4 130.4 134.0 128.2 131.3 132.6

Where a court order or agreement includes a clause providing for an annual adjustment of the amount payable in accordance with changes in CPI, the ABS data will be used to calculate the new amount payable. The table above should be used for any adjustments that are required to use September 2012 CPI indexation figures onwards.

The formula used to apply the CPI inflation factor and calculate the new amount payable is:

Latest quarter index ÷ Earliest quarter index × previous entitlement

Example: A court order provides for the periodic amount of $100 per week to be inflated by the September Sydney CPI on 1 January each year.

September 2021 quarter CPI for Sydney - 120.2
September 2022 quarter CPI for Sydney - 128.6

128.6 ÷ 120.2 × $100 = $106.99

The new periodic amount payable under the court order will be $106.99 per week starting from 1 January 2023.

CPI re-reference

In September 2012, the ABS re-referenced the CPI figures, setting the index base to 100.0 for the reference period 2011-12. The ABS also published conversion factors to allow the figures using the new index reference period to be converted to figures that are consistent with figures published before the re-referencing.

The conversion factors are:

Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide Perth Hobart Darwin Canberra Weighted average
0.5584 0.5649 0.5409 0.5447 0.5572 0.5614 0.5654 0.5550 0.5567

Last reviewed: