The richest three Australians made $1.5 million every hour since 2020, Oxfam’s shocking inequality report has found. And the wealth gap is still growing.
The Oxfam analysis, published today, found that billionaires Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Harry Triguboff have more than doubled their wealth since the start of the pandemic, and Australian billionaires have collectively increased their wealth by 70.5%, or about $120 billion.
It’s come at a time when many Australians are struggling with the rising cost of food, energy and housing, and five billion people worldwide have been made “life threateningly poorer”.
Oxfam Australia Chief Executive Lyn Morgain said there is a correlation, with the amassing of “unimaginable wealth” driving alarming and increased inequality.
“Across the globe, we have begun a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the perilous economic shock of pandemic, inflation and war,” she said.
“Billionaires’ fortunes booming at the same time as rocketing cost-of-living pressures mean that everyday Australians are being forced to cut back on food for their families and heating and cooling for their homes, just to keep their heads above water.”
She said that it was unacceptable to allow such wealth during a period of widespread poverty.
“One of the best mechanisms we have to address this is taxation. The shame of our woeful global response to catastrophic disasters, displacement, famine and the climate crisis cannot be attributed to a scarcity of resources, it is distribution – and that’s the problem all governments, including the Australian government, need to tackle urgently,” she said.
Oxfam is pushing for a raft of urgent changes to the tax system, including scrapping the stage-three tax cuts, better taxing of wealth by implementing a progressive wealth tax on the richest Australians, and implementing a permanent windfall profits tax on big corporations.
It also said fossil fuel subsidies needed to come to an end, noting that more than $1 billion had been spent in the past year, the results of which mostly benefited big corporations.
The organisation believes such changes would help the government tackle climate change, provide funds to urgently build homes during the housing crisis, and prevent profiteering such as that seen by large corporations during the pandemic.
