Melbourne Tops Oasis Index

If you live in this city, there’s no easy way to go out. Cheaply, at least.

Melbourne has been named the world’s most expensive city for cigarettes and beer in Deutsche Bank’s annual Cost of Living Index.

The Oasis Index — a metric guessing what a night out with rock stars Noel and Liam Gallagher might look like — measures the price of five beers and two packets of cigarettes in US dollars.

At $111.20, Melbourne took the top spot ahead of Sydney in second place, with the report attributing the result to “Australia’s relentless application of sin taxes.”

Little by little over the past decade, Melbourne’s Oasis Index has risen by 89 per cent. Across the ditch, New Zealand is not faring much better, with Auckland and Wellington ranking third and fourth respectively.

The United Kingdom was well represented near the top of the list, with London (fifth, $63.90), Birmingham (sixth, $62.80) and Edinburgh (eighth, $60.50) ranking highly due to high tobacco duties.

Dublin, Oslo and New York rounded out the top 10, while Shanghai ($10.40), Rio de Janeiro ($11.70) and Cairo ($12.10) were the cheapest among the 69 cities measured.

If you can’t stop crying your heart out at those figures, there might be a silver lining in the report.

Melbourne ranked 29th on the Cheap Date Index, while Sydneysiders will have to be content with 19th place.

People’s idea of a cheap date is far from universal, so the report defines it as one bottle of wine, one pair of jeans, one dress, two coffees, one meal for two people at a mid-range restaurant, two cinema tickets, two one-way public transport tickets and one five-kilometre taxi trip.

That “cheap” date would set you back $276, compared with $475 in Geneva and $467 in Zurich.