The news is bad, millions are doing it very tough in 21st Century Australia. The triple whammy of skyrocketing cost of living, housing and suppressed wages has dealt a body blow to a swathe of Australians. The social costs are exhaustion, domestic violence and depression. Governments wring their hands and offer useless platitudes.
Yet other parts of our society have never had it so good. Record high profits by our major corporations, unhindered from paying tax. They leave that task to workers.
| Company | Profit AUD | % Increase |
| Woolworths Group | $907 million | +14 |
| Coles Group | $643 million | +17 |
| Qantas | $1billion | + |
| Commonwealth Bank | $5.22 billion | +10 |
| Woodside (oil & gas) | $6.5 billion | +228 |
| Whitehaven Coal | $1.78 billion | +423 |
| BHP’ | $6.46 billion | -32 |
| Rio Tinto | $12.4 billion | -41 |
| Australian corporate profits | $1.50876 trillion | ABS Dec 2022 |
People are working 3 jobs , 7 day working weeks, to survive. Foodbank in December 2022 noted that 3.6 million Australians (15% of the population) experience food insecurity (hunger) with 40% of children in these households. Tens of thousands live in insecure “housing” in parks ,cars and boarding homes. Most have jobs .
Citing Covid or war in Ukraine, prices are out of control with rises on all the commodities of daily life. Government regulators are powerless or toothless to prevent massive rip offs.
And the favourite commodity of capitalism in the 21st century: money is swept out of the reach of people by the Reserve Bank. The banks must get their dues and the people will pay.
The story presented is we must suppress inflation by cutting spending by diverting all available funds to the banks via higher mortgage repayments and rent. What have banks done to warrant all this loot? Absolutely nothing except that they are the lynch-pins of the system. It’s theirs. This is the era of the dictatorship of monopoly capital. Needless to say the Reserve Banks board is made up of “respectable” leading figures of the business world. See for yourself at https://www.rba.gov.au/about-rba/boards/rba-board.html.
Wages and salaries have been suppressed for the last 12 years following the policies of the neo-liberal experiment. Governments across Australia have stifled organized labour leading to atomized worker wage bargaining process and massive profits. The ideas of Hayek promoted by Reagan and Thatcher, influenced Federal Labor governments and were used in full vigour by the Howard LNP government. Despite two subsequent Federal Labor governments, nothing has changed.
For advice they turn to commissions and consultants, who mouth the standard line we must improve productivity- the classic bogey man. Or be condemned to work longer for less.
As for productivity we were promised dividends from digitalization but huge numbers of jobs were lost and branches and offices closed. The message is- do it yourself online. The colossal benefits to corporations of profits from digitalization can not be counted .
“Jim Chalmers says Australians’ incomes will fall and the working week will get longer without major boosts to productivity” Guardian March 16 2023
Workers must get organized and not diverted down the elusive electoral path to parliament in the hope of legislative relief for wages and prices that never satisfies.
Meat unaffordable to many, last week the cattle sale price for meat was approx., $1.78 per kilo and the week before approx., $2.78 per kilo live weight, yet Major Supermarkets appear not to reflect this in their per kilo pricing to their customers it appears.
With Reserve Bank ten Interest rate rises I am indeed a serious sceptic of. For several years appeared to sit pat, then from the first rise an avalanche of rises ensued to an unbearable peak along with highest ever real estate prices, it left a feeling of, now we pounce. Animals place no brutal demands on Animals like Humans do to Humans it appears.
Today, I listened to a John Barilaro and others, was a sound video of past conversations there on my laptop to open and the political spoken content I heard, meant my long held beliefs on the types of conversations they might have I imagined, they would have rang true, leaving me feeling very saddened that Liberal National Politics appear to be far from genuine or indeed I could not be consider to be a caring responsible Public agency.
Regarding Jim Chalmers comment, my reply is, already thousands of workers and families are work tired and financially broken. The many thousands that have kept marching their grievances in vast numbers throughout 2022 and 2023.
For twelve years since NSW privatisation of POWER, they have used power to keep pursuing forever ongoing price hikes it appears with unsatisfactory explanations, for e.g., when the sun goes down. We have Batteries, S.A. Power is sorted by a mass of them that run that State. Many years Geo Thermal runs ACT Library, we have Sea Wave in TAS 24/7, Wind and Solar all working well together. In the future will be clean exportable energy. Now there is talk of a Sun Tax.
Thank you for your response Jacqueline. There are vast growing inequities across the nation.Governments never resolve problems for the people. We must be organised.