Australia’s billionaires Rinehart, Forrest and Triguboff making $1.5m per hour, Oxfam report finds

The filthy rich have enjoyed an unprecedented uplift in their fortunes, all while the rest of the world suffers.

Every hour, Australia’s three richest people rake in an eye-watering $1.5 million.

That’s according to a blistering new report from global charity organisation Oxfam which found the fortunes of the filthy rich around the world have grown at an unprecedented rate despite the cost of living crisis, widening the wealth gap in the process.

Take Australia’s elite billionaires’ club for instance, where mining magnates Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and property heavyweight Harry Triguboff round out the top three.

At time of writing, Ms Rinehart has a net worth of $37.4 billion, Mr Forrest has $33.29 billion while Mr Triguboff can boast a total worth of $23.8 billion, according to The Australian Financial Review’s Rich List.

Oxfam noted that all three had seen their wealth more than double since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a collective, the total wealth of Australian billionaires increased by more than 70 per cent since 2020.

And it’s a phenomenon not unique to Australia. In fact the report noted that US billionaires had seen the biggest boost to their portfolio, all while 4.8 billion people are poorer than they were in 2019.

Gina Rinehart is Australia’s richest person.

Corporations less in tax than they used to as the wealth gap widens. Picture: Oxfam

Oxfam found that since 2020, the richest five men in the world – Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg – have doubled their fortunes.

In exact figures, their net worth has increased by $700 billion, or 114 per cent.

If each of the five wealthiest men were to spend a million American dollars daily (A$1.5 million), they would take 476 years to exhaust their combined wealth.

Cumulatively, billionaires around the globe have made $5 trillion in the years following the pandemic.

Billionaires are now 34 per cent richer than they were at the beginning of this decade.

To put that in perspective, this means their wealth is growing three times as fast as the rate of inflation.

Meanwhile, normal wage growth can’t even keep up with inflation.

“Our own analysis for this report finds that 791 million workers have seen their wages fail to keep up with inflation,” the report noted.

In all, they estimated that workers have missed out on $2.2 trillion over the last two years, equivalent to nearly a month (25 days) of lost wages for each worker.

Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest is Australia’s wealthiest man and second wealthiest person. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Harry Triguboff, is one of the Aussie billionaires who has made a lot of money since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Oxfam released the sobering report right before the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to present their findings to political and corporate leaders attending, as well as the mega rich.

And as if you didn’t need any more proof that the rich are getting richer while the reverse is true for everyone else, the report made more “stark” realisations.

It would take 1,200 years for a US female worker in the health and social sector to earn what a CEO in the biggest Fortune 100 companies earns on average in one year, the report stated.

“CEO pay has risen by more than 1,200 per cent at the 350 largest US companies, vastly outstripping the meagre pay increases of workers,” Oxfam added.

And in a continuing trend of ‘greedflation’ – defined as when large corporate entities make excess profit in a cost of living crisis – the analysis found the world’s largest corporations have experienced a record increase in profits.

Earth’s largest businesses saw an 89 per cent jump in profits for the years 2021 and 2022, compared to the 2017–2020 average.

The world’s five largest corporations combined are valued at more than the combined GDP of all economies in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

They also found that most of the world’s wealth was concentrated in the global north, predominantly the USA.