Australians are fed up with unfairness, new research shows.
A national poll of over 1000 people conducted by Oxfam has found that Australians are deeply concerned about inequality.
Of those surveyed, 76 per cent think the very wealthy don’t pay enough tax; 75 per cent want the Government to take action to close the wealth divide, and two-thirds think it is unfair that the richest one per cent of Australians own more than the poorest 60 per cent.
Yes, you read that right. The top one per cent of Australians are richer than more than half of our entire country.
Income equality has been slowly on the rise in Australia since the mid 1990s, according to the Oxfam survey.
“The world is becoming increasingly unequal and so is Australia,” says the report.
Globally, 66 billionaires are as rich as half of the rest of the world.
Arguably the most staggering statistic to come out of the Oxfam report is that a select group of Aussies – our richest nine tycoons – are wealthier than the poorest 20 per cent of Australia (4.54 million people).
According to the BRW Rich List published in March, these top nine wealthiest Australians had a combined net worth of $57.7 billion.
Gina Rinehart: $17.7 billion
Anthony Pratt: $7 billion
James Packer: $6.6 billion
Ivan Glasenberg: $6.3 billion
Andrew Forrest: $5 billion
Frank Lowy: $4.6 billion
Harry Triguboff: $4.3 billion
John Gandel: $3.2 billion
Paul Ramsay (now deceased): $3 billion
In case you’re wondering, here’s what these fat cats could have bought with all that money.