Workers go hungry while corporations rake it in

The rich in Australia are experiencing massive wealth gains, but a new report reveals just how challenging life is for those at the bottom. The Foodbank Hunger Report 2025 estimates that one in three Australian households (approximately 3.5 million) experienced food insecurity in the past year. Of those, two-thirds (or 20 percent of all households) were severely food insecure, meaning they had skipped meals or even gone whole days without eating.

The most vulnerable in society are the worst affected—67 percent of households with a person with a disability or health issue experienced food insecurity in the past twelve months, as did 68 percent of single-parent households and 48 percent of low-income households, defined as those earning less than $33,800 per year.

The report makes it clear that this is driven by the cost-of-living crisis. Only 21 percent of Australian households live comfortably on their current income, while 87 percent cite the cost of living as one of their top concerns.

“Australia’s housing affordability crisis appears to be supercharging food insecurity in a way we haven’t seen before, with nearly 1 in 2 rental households reporting as food insecure”, Kylea Tink, CEO of Foodbank, said. Highlighting the direct relationship between the housing crisis and food insecurity, 35 percent of renters cited “changes in their household or living arrangements” as a cause of food insecurity.

In response to the rise in the cost of living, households experiencing food insecurity have also reduced eating/drinking in restaurants, cafes and bars, dipped into household savings, cut back on fresh produce, protein, dairy or other food and grocery items, and relied more on credit cards or buy now, pay later apps.

What has the federal Labor government done about this? Has it raised JobSeeker, the single-parent payment, the Disability Support Pension and other welfare payments above the poverty line? Has it placed price caps on groceries and other essentials? Has it capped rents and begun building a deluge of public housing? No. It has not.

All of this comes as the rich are getting even richer. The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors’ most recent report on executive salaries found that the CEOs of Australia’s top 100 companies made, on average, 55 times the wage of an average worker.

Some of Australia’s largest corporations are making major profits from the crisis. Coles and Woolworths made a combined $2.5 billion in after-tax profit last financial year, while Meriton Properties—a developer owned by Australia’s second richest person, Harry Triguboff—recently announced that it made $222 million, an increase from $165 million the year before. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, analysts expect big Australian banks to have made $30 billion in profit this financial year, driven by growth in loans—particularly home loans.

But not everything is as rosy as it seems for Australia’s wealthiest. While working-class families struggle to afford food, the Australian Financial Review recently reported that the rich are suffering from severe super-yacht parking-space insecurity, driven by the increasing number and size of yachts in Australia.

According to the Foodbank report, 35 percent of food-insecure households don’t seek help because they believe that others are in greater need. While those most in need are concerned about taking too much from society, the rich possess no such compunctions. Just take Elon Musk’s (successful) bid for a US$1 trillion (A$1.5 trillion) pay packet, or the estimated $165 billion in negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions housing investors are expected to receive from the federal government over the next decade.

“The capitalist class is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because ... it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him”, Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto. “Society can no longer live under this class, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.”

We need a society that uses its resources to meet everyone’s needs, ensuring no-one goes hungry or without a roof over their head ever again. Even more than that, everyone ought to live dignified and fulfilling lives. The wealth is there, but currently it funds the otherworldly extravagances of the rich. We have to take it from them.