Just when we’re seeing a renewed bout of stupidity from some in the media over the “inflation bogey” and how Australia is a “high cost place to do business”, along comes further evidence of a benign inflation environment.

Yesterday the normally sensible Adele Ferguson from Fairfax used a gimmicky international survey on the cheapest places for a date to complain about how expensive Australia now was and the threat of the “inflation bogey”. She even complained about the high cost of iPhones here, apparently oblivious to the fact that the government initiated an inquiry into exactly that sort of gouging by IT companies.

Today, News Limited picked up the same survey to run their own version in which “households battle against a strong Australian dollar while the rest of the global economy slows”.

Eh? Battle against the strong dollar? The strong dollar that delivers lower petrol prices, cheaper cars, less expensive international travel, cheaper imported goods?

Battle against reality, more likely. Today’s Australian Bureau of Statistics inflation data for the March quarter showed the headline CPI rose 0.4%, much less than the market estimate of a rise of 0.7%.

That left the annual rate at 2.5%, down on the market forecast of 2.8% for the year to March and little higher than the 2.2% for the year to December 2012. The impact of the supposedly economy-wrecking carbon tax seems to have been limited to one quarter and, if anything, has been less than predicted by federal Treasury.

The Reserve Bank’s underlying rate was also 0.4% for an annual rate of 2.4% . That’s well inside the RBA’s target range of 2% to 3% over time and there’s nothing there to startle the horses or help those gloomsters who see inflation lurking around every corner (and in most major statistical series). Seasonally adjusted, the ABS’s All Groups price basket rose just 0.1% in the March quarter, to be up 2.5% for the year.

The CPI data allows the RBA room to sit and wait to see what happens to the resources investment boom — and whether housing and construction activity quickens to become the new growth driver for the economy. Should the overseas slowdown which is now apparent deepen, and our terms of trade drop again, then the RBA has plenty of room to further cut rates.

The ABS said today that the “most significant price rises in the March quarter 2013 were for new dwelling purchase by owner-occupiers (+1.7%), pharmaceutical products (+7.%), tertiary education (+6.5%) and tobacco (+3.7%). Wine also went up.

The big price falls were for international holiday travel and accommodation (–5.2% — so much for “battling the strong dollar” eh?), furniture (–6.8%) and fruit (–7.0%). Audio, visual and computing equipment, clothing and vegetables also fell.

The ABS said the tradables part of the CPI (which is exposed to import and international price competition and covers 40% of the basket) fell 1.0% in the quarter. The non-tradables part (covering 60% of the CPI) rose 1.3%.

At some point, perhaps, Australians might realise that the perennial complaint of the high cost of living simply doesn’t accord with the current economic environment. But some in the media will probably never accept it.