Inequality retains rising in Australia as a result of we play by one rule — do not upset the wealthy, writes Carl Rhodes.
AS ANOTHER JANUARY involves a detailed, so too does the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. ‘A spirit of dialogue’ was this yr’s slogan, and as soon as once more the political and financial elites of the world descended on the idyllic alpine setting to, of their phrases, “engage in forward-looking discussions to address global issues and set priorities” and “call for bold collective action”.
The actuality was much less noble. It was one other routine spectacle the place the wealthy and highly effective rubbed shoulders and jockeyed for place. U.S. President Donald Trump boasted that:
“Growth is exploding, productivity is surging, investment is soaring, incomes are rising, inflation has been defeated”.
His former “first buddy” Elon Musk promised that his AI was the “pathway to abundance”.
Big phrases from the 2 billionaires! The information inform a unique story. As reported by Oxfam within the lead-up to the assembly, 2025 noticed billionaire wealth surge by greater than 16 per cent. Australia follows the identical trajectory. Here too, the wealth and energy of the extremely‑wealthy proceed to develop, and financial inequality continues to deepen. So why is nothing being accomplished about it?
Australia follows the world development in inequality
Each yr, as a prelude to the Davos convention, Oxfam, the worldwide organisation centered on lowering world poverty and inequality, releases its annual Inequality Report. Its function is to focus on the issue of worldwide inequality and to confront world leaders with the size and penalties of this injustice on the very second they collect to debate the world’s future.
Oxfam has launched the report yearly since 2014, and every time it paperwork the identical troubling sample of how the wealth and energy of billionaires are rising, whereas financial inequality stagnates or worsens.
Since 2015, the variety of folks on this planet dealing with average or extreme meals insecurity has elevated by 43 per cent, with virtually half of the world’s inhabitants now dwelling in poverty. Today, there are greater than 3,000 billionaires globally, the very best quantity ever, with their collective wealth additionally at a record-breaking excessive.
It isn’t just about cash, it’s about energy. Oxfam’s evaluation reveals {that a} billionaire is greater than 4,000 occasions extra more likely to maintain political workplace than the typical individual. Despite this huge affect, and regardless of how loud the warning indicators turn out to be, it seems that the Davos elite, billionaires included, are failing to acknowledge or tackle the deepening disaster of worldwide financial injustice.
Australia is not any exception. When Oxfam Australia introduced the 2025 Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Defending Freedom Against Billionaire Power report on 19 January, they said that the wealth of the typical Australian billionaire had grown by virtually $600,000 for every day of 2025. Australia is house to 48 billionaires and the quantity is rising. They personal extra wealth than the whole backside 40 per cent of Australians put collectively.
Band-Aids on a damaged system
You may count on such a grotesque focus of wealth to be a scandal in a rustic that claims to prize the honest go, mateship, egalitarianism, and a wholesome disrespect for energy.
Instead of concern, we get silence. Australia’s political class treats inequality as if it had been an acceptable facet‑impact of contemporary life relatively than a political alternative. On each side of politics, leaders tiptoe across the focus of wealth and energy, cautious of upsetting a neoliberal order that has held agency for a lot of many years.
The result’s a political tradition that normalises inequality whereas appearing as if nothing can or ought to be accomplished about it. We are caught in a downward spiral the place naming the issue is prevented and confronting it’s politically unthinkable, at the same time as inequality corrodes social belief and undermines the values Australians declare to carry pricey.
It is true that since being re-elected in May 2025 the Labor authorities has carried out insurance policies to ease the monetary strain. There have been earnings tax cuts, Medicare exemptions for these on decrease incomes, assist for first house patrons, vitality invoice rebates, and cuts to pupil money owed.
These insurance policies supply welcome aid for households fighting the associated fee‑of‑dwelling disaster, however they don’t contact the buildings that drive inequality. They are Band‑Aids on a damaged system that supply short-term fixes however depart the underlying drawback untouched.
The golden rule: Don’t upset the wealthy
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been constant about one factor: his authorities is not going to take daring motion on inequality. He has explicitly dominated out introducing and even contemplating new tax measures, insisting final August that “the one tax policy we’re implementing is the one we took to the election”.
In follow, meaning years of inaction with no significant reform thought-about till not less than after May 2028, and doubtless nothing after that both. This is regardless of rising strain from throughout the neighborhood to reform capital good points tax and unfavourable gearing, and implement inheritance tax or wealth taxes. These are the levers that could possibly be the beginning of actual structural change. They are usually not being pulled.
Albanese is a political realist who needs to arrange a successful hand for Labor on the subsequent election. He additionally is aware of that any trace of tax reform is handled as political poison by an voters terrified that their very own belongings is likely to be touched. And so, the federal government chooses the most secure path of providing aid, avoiding reform, and hoping nobody notices the widening gulf between the rich and everybody else.
The onerous fact is that in Australia’s mainstream politics, each policy possibility is on the desk besides people who may upset the rich. That is how oligarchy works. The political class will tinker on the edges, however they won’t confront the buildings that enable billionaire wealth to develop unchecked and inequality to spiral uncontrolled.
Until that modifications, the variety of billionaires will preserve rising, and inequality will proceed its relentless, corrosive trajectory.
Carl Rhodes is Professor of Business and Society on the University of Technology, Sydney. He has written a number of books on the connection between liberal democracy and modern capitalism. You can comply with him on X/Twitter @ProfCarlRhodes.
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