TRANSCRIPT
Lines form at a Melbourne food bank long before it even opens its doors.
Lately, its stock of fresh food lasts no more than a few hours.
Nancy Chen is among a growing number of struggling Australians seeking food relief.
"Sometimes it's really hard to buy something. But here it's helping people. I like it. I come many times."
In 2020, manager Chris Sprake says he was serving around 40 people a week.
Now, that number is getting closer to 500.
He says most of those people were financially sufficient up until recently, but have been hit by ever-growing cost-of-living prices.
"So there's been a significant increase in people accessing food security. We also provide free online health services, and they're running at capacity. But, in the last 18 months, more and more people who would consider themselves traditionally middle class are turning up and saying I had to choose between rent and food this week, so they come to us for food."
A new report by the University of New South Wales and the Australian Council of Social Service found the collective wealth of the top ten percent of households soared by 84 percent in the last two decades.
For the lowest 60 percent, that growth has been far slower, rising at a rate of just 55 percent.
Income inequality gaps meanwhile have been closing amid historically low unemployment.
Still, certain groups, including single parent households and migrants born in non-English speaking countries, frequently place among the lowest percentile.
Cassandra Goldie is the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service.
"This is not a normal situation. What we're facing here is an acceleration of a divide in the Australian community, that will be very damaging for us socially, economically and also for the health of our democracy."
She says the widening of this financial gap is creating an ethical dilemma that the entire country needs to face.
"This is a deeply moral question that we need to be confronting. We need, as a very wealthy country overall, to be deeply disturbed that we've got people on some of the lowest incomes, going without food on a regular basis, living in fear of becoming homeless on the one hand. And the we've got people with a large accumulation of wealth."
Some argue that the wealth gap is largely due to the rapidly increasing real estate prices.
A recent analysis by the Real Estate Institute of Australia showed house prices are overvalued by over 29 per cent.
Joey Moloney, deputy director of the Grattan Institute's economic policy program, says the increase is leading to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a small group of Australians.
"So housing makes up about two-thirds of household wealth in Australia. And what we've seen over the past few decades is skyrocketing prices, well above the rate of wage growth, combined with falling home ownership. So what that means is you've got more expensive houses concentrated in fewer hands. So it doesn't take Einstein to draw the link between that and rising wealth inequality. So really, one of the key long term fixes to growing wealth inequality in Australia, is fixing our housing market. Increasing supply and reducing tax breaks on the demand side to make house price growth slower than otherwise and to reduce wealth inequality."
Greater income support, a reduction of high income tax concessions and housing reforms - are among a number of potential policy recommendations being considered by the federal government to help close the gap, ahead of the May budget.
