CANBERRA, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- Australia's inequality is the worst it has been in two decades, data released by the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (Oxfam) on Monday revealed.
Oxfam said that Australian billionaires increased their wealth by 38 billion Australian dollars (30 billion U.S. dollars) in the financial year ending in June 2017.
The "Growing Gulf Between Work and Wealth" briefing paper found that the number of Australian billionaires has doubled in the last decade when the country deals with an "inequality crisis."
"Oxfam is committed to tackling poverty and inequality - but a broken economic system that is concentrating more wealth in the hands of the rich and powerful, while ordinary people struggle to scrape by, is fuelling an inequality crisis," Helen Szoke, chief executive officer (CEO) of Oxfam Australia, said in a media release on Monday.
"Over the decade since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the wealth of Australian billionaires has increased by almost 140 percent to a total of 115.4 billion AUD (92.1 billion U.S. dollars) last year.
"Yet over the same time, the average wages of ordinary Australians have increased by just 36 percent and average household wealth grew by 12 percent.
"The richest 1 percent of Australians continue to own more wealth than the bottom 70 percent of Australians combined. While everyday Australians are struggling more and more to get by, the wealthiest groups have grown richer and richer."
The Oxfam Australia paper published on Monday coincides with the release of an Oxfam global report which found that the world's richest 1 percent of people made 82 percent of the global wealth created in the last financial year.
"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system," Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said.
Szoke said that in order to counteract the growing inequality, the Australian government must do away with a proposed 5 percent cut to the corporate tax rate.
She said Australia's biggest companies should also commit to ensuring every employee in their supply chain was earning at least a living wage.
"The Federal Government and Australian companies cannot ignore this inequality crisis and must act to curtail the widening gulf between the super-rich and ordinary workers," Szoke said.
