Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Increasing inequality is driving so many of the challenges that Australians face and Australia faces as an economy, but the Turnbull government cannot even say the word, much less take meaningful action. In fact, if you plug in inequality and the Treasurer's name into Hansard for this parliament you will get no results—not a single result. If you were minded to do the same with the Prime Minister—and I do not encourage anyone else to do so; I have gone through that—you will find he has said the word on one occasion in this parliament. This is far from good enough, when we are more unequal as a society than at any time since the Great Depression.

We have a deeply ideological government here which is determined to divide Australians. Sometimes this is explicit—just look at the behaviour of the minister for immigration, openly fanning the flames of racial division. But it is also insidious, promoting an approach to managing our economy in the interests of the few and not the many. This carries consequences beyond the simply economic; it is breeding resentment and alienation as well as compounding the anxieties for too many who are just getting by. Inequality separates Australians from one another, and increasingly this separation is physical, especially in our major cities. The boom in housing prices is helping drive this, as well as increasing wealth inequality. This is a phenomenon that was massively exacerbated by the election of the coalition government under the then leader the member for Warringah, but it has not changed with his replacement, after Labor through the global financial crisis managed to put brakes on the growth of inequality.

On this side of the House we remember that it was in 2014 that the then employment minister said Australia was in danger of facing a wages explosion. How did that turn out? At the time, wages growth was well below average. Since then, as we on this side of the House know and recognise as a challenge to deal with, workers have experienced record-low wage growth. Yet, still the attack on working people continues. The Treasurer talks about wages growth. He does so while endorsing penalty rate cuts that will lower wages for hundreds of thousands of hardworking people—as just one example of many. The election slogan of 'jobs and growth' has been exposed as empty words, with further downward revisions of growth prospects just revealed and a labour market that is simply not working for workers.

Philip Lowe recently put it this way to the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum. He suggested that our challenge is not so much slower growth alone but 'the distribution of that growth because technology and trade created very strong returns for that part of the population that benefits.' And so it is exciting times for the PM's neighbours, but not so for most Australians, who are feeling the effects of slow wage growth, underemployment or insecure employment, compounded by this housing affordability crisis.

In this context, what is the government's response? Welfare cuts, watering down the Racial Discrimination Act and stripping penalty rates—it is no response at all. The coalition have no plans to reduce inequality in Australia, and that is why the Prime Minister and his Treasurer are so scared of even saying the word. They are not engaging with the challenges of the changing world of work. When it comes to housing affordability, they are increasing the problem. Not only do they have no plan to ensure housing can be affordable to all Australians but the Minister for Urban Infrastructure has specifically said that he thinks people should have other things to think about—18C, perhaps? The absolute disdain he and other members of this government have for everyday Australians' struggle to own a home could not be more clear.

A recent study released by the OECD has shown that the decline of labour share across the OECD is particularly pronounced in Australia. We are seeing a significant decline in the ratio of median to average wages, driven by large increases at the top. This is a problem we must get serious about solving. It presents profound challenges. It requires a complex, nuanced and multifaceted response, but the Turnbull government have one answer to this problem: corporate tax cuts that will trickle down. This is absolutely the wrong decision. What we need are investments in productive infrastructure and in people, especially through education, like supporting needs-based funding of schools education and reversing the cuts to higher education.

This debate about inequality is ultimately a debate about how we see ourselves. It is not just about spreadsheet analysis. It raises profound moral questions which Labor is engaging with. But it is also an instrumental challenge, because we recognise that securing decent economic growth rests on putting brakes on inequality and taking seriously the concerns of ordinary Australians.