You have to wonder how much the people charged with running the country's economy really know about actual conditions on the ground.
As the debate over whether millennials should shell out $22 for smashed avocado three times a week or a million dollars-plus to transfer real estate from their wealthy boomer parents to their impoverished selves rolled on, Treasury Secretary John Fraser weighed in by suggesting they'd do better giving up coffee if they wanted to save a deposit.
The most expensive coffee in Australia is sold in Perth, not Melbourne.Credit:Westend61
"I'd prefer people to start talking about the exorbitant cost of coffee in Melbourne. It's got to be the highest in world," Fraser told the Senate Estimates Committee.
Sorry, Secretary, you're not even close. If you'd been paying less attention to the Trade Weighted Index and more attention to the Cappuccino Index you'd know that Melbourne doesn't even have the most expensive coffee in Australia: that's Perth, where the price of a flat white was given extra froth by the resources boom and still hasn't settled.
Perth's average cappuccino costs $3.86, and that's for a takeaway; in Melbourne it's $3.63 – just on average for Australia.
Yes, Melbourne has $4 flat whites – at some pretty cool places where a twenty-something can hot-desk all morning for the price of a cup. In Perth there is a good chance you'll be shelling out $4 or $4.50 at Dome, a ubiquitous and soulless chain store that has the cafe market cornered in the west.
And Melbourne coffee is nowhere near the most expensive in the world. You can easily pay $5 in the US – five US dollars that is. At Paramount Coffee Project in Los Angeles – owned by a pair of Australians – a caffe latte costs $US4 ($5.20).
London's hip Prufrock's offers "espresso with milk 8oz" (a flat white) for £3. Even with post-Brexit sterling that's $4.80.
In Paris in 2014 I paid €3 for the worst milk coffee I've ever tasted. (The barista left the jug of UHT steaming away while he went for a cigarette.)
A $4 flat white at a hip Melbourne cafe is made with specialty beans that cost 10 times as much as the commodity coffee in your Paris cafe au lait, and the milk will be fresh, whole and possibly organic. The barista gets paid a living rate and the service is top-rate – a pretty good deal all around.
The country's economy is in the hands of a man with a shaky grasp of one of the world's most traded commodities, and no idea about the cost of goods sold. I, for one, am worried.
Matt Holden is a Fairfax Media contributor.