Actually, since the 1980’s Australia has been seeing an upward trend in income and wealth inequality – the rich are getting richer quicker than poor. 

“Despite a record 25 successive years of economic growth in Australia this is being shared much more unequally than in the past,” Tasmanian Council of Social Services chief executive officer Kym Goodes said. 

When looking at wealth and income distribution, the population is broken into percentiles. Each percentile is representative of a portion of the population and, all going well, their portion of wealth should be roughly equal. 

However, figures reveal those in the lowest 20 per cent of the population earn about five times less than the top 20 per cent. Even more alarmingly, the wealth at the top is a whopping 70 times greater than their counterparts at the bottom. 

But it hasn’t always been this way. A paper released by the Australian National University said the income share of the top ten per cent of the country began trending up in the late 1970’s. 

“In 1993, a company CEO earned 15 times as much as the average full time worker but by 2007 the gap between executives and the average wage widened out by a factor of 250,” an Australia Institute report on income wealth and inequality said. 

Economic Opportunity Institute board member Stan Sorscher believes changes in equality in recent decades (in America; although Australia is following similar trends, albeit slower) is due to changing morals and a shifting social contract. 

“We see two distinct historic periods since World War II. In the first period, workers shared the gains from productivity. In the later period, a generation of workers gained little, even as productivity continued to rise,” he wrote in a blog. 

He believes that in the post-World War II era there was an emphasis on the collective good, after the war when everyone came together – and sacrificed together – for the nation. This changed in the 1970’s with the rise of a capitalist mindset where it was each man for himself, and creation of personal wealth was the aim.

Economist Saul Eslake believes the rise of globalisation also plays a role in increasing inequity.  

“People at the top are more able to say, ‘Pay me more or I’ll go and work for another company which will’, including potentially a company overseas,” Mr Eslake said. 

Added to which, disgruntled employers can easily choose to find other, cheaper employees overseas, reducing the bargaining power of workers. 

There are also a range of other factors that contribute to the complex web that results in inequality. Differences in education levels, work skills and ability, worker productivity, inherited wealth and investment are all key causal factors.

There may be a misconception those in the lower percentiles are wallowing at home, jobless and doing little to improve their circumstance. However, a third of people living below the poverty line are employed - the working poor, if you will. 

In fact, the bottom 40 per cent of households hold only 5 per cent of the wealth, many of whom work.

So what’s the outlook?

There has been a slight decline in inequality in Australia following the global financial crisis, but it remains to be seen if this will result in an ongoing downward trend, reversing the increase that has typified the last few decades. 

Mr Eslake believes some inequality will always be inevitable.

“There is always going to be some inequality because, like it or not, human abilities are not equally distributed and we don’t all start out with equal chances in life,” he said. 

But, Ms Goodes wants to see things change. 

“First, we need to stop seeing inequality as the norm. This kind of disparity between those at the top and the bottom is not the status quo - especially not in a wealthy country like Australia,” she said. 

“It is our responsibility as a wealthy country to ensure that there are measures to reduce the inequality in our society.”