The combined wealth of the three richest Australians – Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Harry Triguboff – has more than doubled since 2020 at a staggering rate of $1.5m an hour, according to new analysis from Oxfam.
The report looked at increasing wealth inequality across the world and, using data from Forbes, found the total wealth of Australia’s richest billionaires increased by 70.5% or $120bn between 2020 and 2023.
There are 47 Australians who make the Forbes Rich List, which is calculated in US dollars, with the total number of Australian billionaires sitting at 141, according to the AFR’s 2023 rich list.
Between November 2020 and 2023, Rinehart’s wealth increased from $23.5bn to $40.6bn, Forrest’s rose from $12bn to $33.2bn and Triguboff’s went from $11.3bn to $23.3bn, according to the figures from Forbes cited by Oxfam.
Meanwhile, many Australians have struggled with the rising cost of living, with Australian Council of Social Service data last year showing one in eight Australians are living in poverty. Poverty in Australia is 50% of median household income, ranging from $489 a week for a single person to $1,027 a week for a couple with two children.
Rinehart, a mining magnate and heiress, and Triguboff, a real estate developer who also founded Meriton, were contacted for comment but did not reply.
A spokesperson for Fortescue Metals Group said in a statement that Forrest, the former CEO and current non-executive chairman of the mining and green energy company, was in the process of giving his wealth away.
“Andrew has publicly stated he will be giving away his personal wealth and this process is well under way,” the spokesperson said. “Last year 220 million Fortescue shares – one fifth of the Forrest shareholding - were transferred to Minderoo Foundation, which now has an endowment of more than $9 billion.”
Minderoo is the philanthropic organisation founded by Forrest and his former wife, Nicola.
“The donation of 220 million in shares (currently valued at $28 per share) was equivalent to giving wealth away at $700,000 an hour over 12 months,” the spokesperson said.
The Oxfam report called for the federal government to scrap the stage-three tax cuts and add a progressive wealth tax of 2-5% on Australian multimillionaires and billionaires, which could generate $32.36bn each year.
“Australia is not immune from these terrible trends of inequality,” Oxfam Australia’s chief executive, Lyn Morgain, said. “We have seen over previous decades very significant decreases in the effective income for people at the lower end, while we’ve seen these massive 70% increases for billionaires.
“[That amount] could single-handedly not just fix the aid budget, but also ensure adequate social security and good quality housing for those on low incomes.”
Morgain said the stage-three tax cuts could be used to build more than 60,000 houses annually to address the housing crisis, bring people on welfare out of poverty and increase international aid.
The cost of building one dwelling for social housing is $262,000, according to the UNSW City Futures Research Centre.
Using UBS and Credit Suisse among other institutions, the report found globally billionaires were almost $5tn wealthier than in 2020, and their wealth had grown three times faster than the rate of inflation, while global poverty reminded mired at pre-pandemic levels.
The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $610bn to $1.3tn since 2020 – at a rate of $21m an hour.
Oxfam found just 0.4% of about 1,600 of the world’s largest and most influential companies are publicly committed to paying their workers a living wage and support payment of a living wage in their value chains. The companies were using data from the World Benchmarking Alliance, which tracks 2,000 of the world’s largest and influential companies. The living wage was determined according to the area the worker lives in.
Oxfam also estimates that if the wealth of the five richest billionaires continues to rise at the same rate as it has over the past five years, the world will see the first trillionaire in the next 10 years, while it will take 229 years to ensure the number of people living under the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 a day is reduced to zero.
“We cannot accept a society that promotes the gross accumulation of wealth alongside widespread global poverty,” Morgain said. “One of the best mechanisms we have to address this is taxation.”
Oxfam research in July last year revealed 722 mega-corporations raked in $1.5tn a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022 globally. In the same timeframe, 5 billion people around the world have been made life-threateningly poorer.
In Australia, many corporations landed super profits, including Woolworths, Santos and Woodside, Morgain said.
