The biggest winner of the federal election? Capitalists

The ALP and the Coalition have spent roughly equal time governing Australia in the last four decades. Several elections in that period have been politically meaningful. Yet, looking at society’s wealthiest people and the companies they run, election outcomes have been largely irrelevant to their fortunes.

No matter how you measure it—the income share of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population, the share of national income going to company profits, billionaire wealth as a share of the total economy—the fat cats have gotten fatter decade after decade, regardless of which party was in power.

In 1984, just after the Hawke Labor government took office, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population took home about one-quarter of all domestic income. Corporate revenues were about 21 percent of the annual gross domestic product (the total value of all the goods and services produced in Australia), and the wealth of the richest 200 Australians was 3.5 percent of GDP.

Reviewing Business Review Weekly estimates of ruling class accumulated wealth after almost a decade of federal Labor government in 1992, Matthew Eaton and Frank Stilwell wrote in the Journal of Australian Political Economy:

“Overall, the BRW data provides a striking picture of the private wealth amassed by corporate cowboys, paper entrepreneurs, wealthy families and the ‘captains of industry’ in the last decade ... [I]t shows the powerful tendency towards increased wealth concentration.”

That was just the start of it. By 2004, after twelve years of the ALP and eight years of the Coalition (give or take), the wealthiest 10 percent were taking home about one-third of all domestic income—a 30 percent increase in their share. The wealth of the richest 200 Australians was 8.4 percent of GDP—more than double their share in 1984.

After another twelve years of the Coalition and eight of the ALP (give or take), the wealth of the richest 200 Australians in 2024 was 27.3 percent of gross domestic product—more than triple the 2004 figure and eight times more than in 1984. Corporate revenues climbed perpetually as well. If you take 1975 as the starting point, they have gone from 15 percent of GDP to 27 percent—an 80 percent increase.

According to the Australian Financial Review (which took over publishing the rich list in 2017), the fortunes of the Rich 200 grew by more than 10 percent to $624.9 billion in the last twelve months of Labor in office. Even when accounting for inflation, the growth in the wealth of these people in just one year is more than the wealth the top 200 families of the early 1980s had accumulated in their entire lives.

To put the $624.9 billion figure in a different light: the total wages earned by all 14.5 million people in the labour force across Australia in the last six months is less than what the top 200 are worth.

It’s not just the super-wealthy and big corporations raking it in under the two-party system of Labor-Liberal governments. The upper-middle classes have also thrived.

In the 21st century, residential property speculation has become one of the most reliable paths to riches among the wealthy layers below the billionaire class (although some billionaires, such as Harry Triguboff, Australia’s second richest person last year, have certainly built property empires as well).

Both the ALP and the Liberal Party have turned housing into a casino in which investors, on average, never lose. Real property prices have more than doubled since 2000. The biggest beneficiaries? The wealthiest 20 percent of the country, who “earned” three-quarters of the gains in investment property values between 2002 and 2022.

So while the smashing defeat of Peter Dutton’s right-wing Coalition is a tremendous political victory, the ultra-wealthy who have increasingly accumulated the country’s wealth will not lose much sleep over the election result.

They know that, whoever is in office, the big winners will continue to be those with the biggest bank accounts.