Australia’s rich have continued to grow their fortunes, with the tech and property sectors creating more of our top earners, according to this year’s Australian Financial Review’s rich list.
Gina Rinehart has kept her top spot for the fifth year in a row on the annual list, which reveals the total wealth of the 200 richest people in Australia increased 11% to $624.9bn, even as the country struggled with high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.
While iron ore prices meant Rinehart’s wealth broke the $40bn barrier for the first time, the marriage breakdown of Andrew Forrest and Nicola Forrest – whose wealth is now split – meant the “ore-oligarchs” (as the AFR has previously dubbed them) dropped down the list.
Though five of the top 10 fortunes are built on extraction, the era of tech kings and property moguls is here, with those sectors dominating alongside mining.
Harry Triguboff, 91, who has boosted his build-to-rent portfolio in recent years by rebranding his 5,000-strong portfolio of commercial rental units as Meriton Build for Rent, sat at second place with an estimated increase of 11% to $26.5bn.
Property developers Tim Gurner, Sam Tarascio and Maha Sinnathamby all made the list. But there are now 28 technologists on the list, including Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar and Canva’s Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht.
Richard Holden, a professor of economics at the University of NSW, said the list showed a growth in new categories of wealth generation.
“The old image of Australia as a country that just digs things out of the ground and maybe does some building really isn’t there any more,” Holden said.
“Not all of these people are new this year but I think if you look at Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar, the Afterpay founders, are in there [at] 117 and 118, having gone up 10-11% in the last year.
“Sam Hupert, who’s at 87, again is not new on the list, but technology is his source of wealth – he is the co-founder of a medical imaging software company. That’s something I think is reflective of the changing nature of the Australian and world economy.”
Cryptocurrency has made some Australians exceptionally rich – with Estonian-based online gaming mogul Tim Heath, worth $2.27bn, and Russell Wilson, who owns 80% of online trading platform CoinSpot, both making the cut.
The one uniting factor for Australia’s wealthiest, Holden said, was that they had either launched or inherited businesses.
“There’s no other way you’re going to make a billion dollars,” Holden said. “The way economists like me would talk about it is we’d say, you’re not going to generate these very large levels of wealth from labour income, if you like selling your time, selling your labour. You’re going to need to inherit the wealth or found a company.”
He said globally, there were few examples of people who had become billionaires from their jobs – such as Tiger Woods and JK Rowling.
“My own perspective is, we should be worrying less about a few extremely wealthy people, and more about: how well are we lifting up the people at the other end of the economic spectrum?” Holden said.
“Are we providing them with the capability to lead productive and secure lives with dignity? That involves being able to own a home and having a good job.”
Australia Institute economist Matt Grudnoff argued the large amount of wealth being carried at the very top showed Australia’s economy was suffering under monopolies.
Grudnoff said in a functioning economy billionaires would not exist, as there would be more competition.
“If we had markets that worked well, but were competitive, then you wouldn’t see any billionaires at all,” Grudnoff said.
Research from the Australia Institute has shown the main driver for inflation in Australia is excess corporate profits, not wages, which accounted for 69% of additional inflation beyond the RBA’s target.
Grudnoff said a tax on excess profits, especially in the mining sector, would create a stronger economy overall.
“The idea is that excess profits that they’re making shouldn’t be attributed to one person; that’s actually bad for the economy,” he said.
“It’s the government’s job to step in and take those profits and distribute it to society in a democratic way. That’s why we tax excess profits, because otherwise they accumulate to individuals, and we create a more unequal society.
“The very fact that mining is the largest of all of those industries, by dollar value, in this rich list shows that we don’t tax our mining industry nearly enough.”
