Online retail therapy is still booming despite the cost-of-living crisis putting pressure on Australian wallets. Even with inflation leading to more expensive groceries, interest rates remaining high and wages staying relatively stagnant, Australians are choosing to pop items into their online shopping baskets. Australia Post’s latest revealed online spending grew by two per cent in the past year as posties rushed to deliver the high number of parcels bought on the internet.
In the last quarter, there was a 4.4 per cent jump in online purchases compared to the same period last year. The recent splurge is attributed to events like the end-of-financial-year sales luring consumers with bargains.
Fashion, apparel, health, beauty and recreational goods were the main things people bought. More than 5.7 million Australian households made an online purchase every month in the last quarter.
Tasmanians, Northern Territorians and Queenslanders spent the most time shopping online during this period. Despite Australians shopping online frequently, they are buying less. The data revealed the number of items in the online basket has decreased by 2.
6 per cent year-on-year. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics showed people were tightening their budgets, with overall household spending only rising by 0.1 per cent in the past year.
Lawyers for Liberal senator Linda Reynolds are poring over tens of thousands of pages of potential evidence taken from Brittany Higgins’ phone. The former.
