There is a solution to our growing inequality

The solution, which is in Labor's grasp but unfortunately not in its mindset, lies in the upcoming federal budget.

More on that later. Firstly, I'll expand on our grossly unequal distribution of wealth.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics' last major survey reported that the average household wealth of the top 20 per cent had risen from $2.7 million to $3.3 million in the previous decade, whereas that of the bottom 20 per cent had fallen from $38,800 to $35,100.

Just last week, the Australia Institute published a study titled Inequality on Steroids, a snapshot of a startlingly unequal Australia where the top 10 per cent had cornered 93 per cent of the growth in national wealth in the past decade. Nine in 10 Australians, meanwhile, had seen almost no benefit.

This was a "radical reversal" of history and made Australia an outlier against comparable countries. "It has become increasingly clear that the Australian economy is not working for most people," Matt Grudnoff, the study's co-author, said.

As mentioned earlier, if Labor could only live up to its historic mission instead of kowtowing to neoliberal economic agenda, this can be done, as the Greens have repeatedly pointed out. The solution lies in the forthcoming federal budget. Let's see how.

The Australia Institute study showed that a set of potential federal budget decisions that could redress the inequality gap: the stage three tax cuts that benefit the top 10 per cent of earners; the superannuation tax breaks that disproportionately favour the wealthiest; the tax anomaly of negative gearing on investment property; tax-free franking credits.

All of these have delivered the greatest redistribution of wealth in a generation into the hands of the privileged few. Australia's biggest welfare recipients are, via advantages in the tax system, those who are relatively privileged, who are not just keeping their own from the taxman but actively taking from the neediest.

Federal Labor's caution in taking on these policies is evident. The lesson it took from its 2019 election defeat was that its policies cost it victory.

But if a coast-to-coast red wave is not a mandate to catch up with what is happening in this country, what is? Labor is ascendant in every mainland state. Its opponents are in total disarray. However, the age-old maxim haunts it like something dead rotting under the floorboards. Winning power comes first. You can't do anything without winning.

But how much winning does it take before you make those wins produce a better country? For all its political capital, by continuing the policies of the neoliberal status quo, the ALP risks merely supporting the status quo.

If it is unable to reverse policies that increase inequality, why is it in power? So-called "radical" policies are only one way of putting hard-won political capital at risk. A surer way, as evinced by the previous government, is inaction. Inertia, the absence of courage, can be a greater waste.

In Australia and the US, the biggest recipients of welfare are the affluent. They pay less to borrow money, they receive most government aid, they pay a lower percentage of their income on necessities. It is, even more than when James Baldwin wrote it in 1960, "extremely expensive to be poor".

In Australia, the neoliberal revolution was set in train by the Hawke/Keating Labor government in the 1980s in the blatantly and obviously incorrect belief that a rising tide would lift all boats. The evidence now clearly shows the 'bleeding obvious'.

Even the Treasurer acknowledges this. In his recent essay in The Monthly, Jim Chalmers wrote of "how unjust it is that people who live on the outskirts of capital cities and in some regional areas experience much more inequality than other citizens".

He outlines a manifesto for "values-based capitalism" and a rejection of the failed neoliberal model. But will he act to redress the damage of neoliberalism? Unfortunately, it's not looking very likely.