Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister tells us that he actually understands this whole issue of fairness and he says:

Fairer is what is it all about. Fairness has got to be the key priority.

But I really ask the Prime Minister to tell us what he thinks is happening across Australia; about the share that wages get as a proportion of the nation's wealth; about the fact that, over the last 20 years, we have seen the growth of the wealth of those top one per cent of our community has grown at a much faster rate than the wealth of anyone else and that we have in our society an escalating disparity in wealth. It is not because there are leaners and lifters. The entrenched advantage that comes not only from the genetics that the Prime Minister likes to talk about but also from the structural elements of our community, the structural elements of reward for effort, is increasingly creating a situation where, if you have got money, you make more money.

So all of the time, each day, he is getting up over and over again and saying: 'Fairness is what it's all about.' You tell us, Mr Prime Minister: what analysis have you done about where we are going in this community; and what are you going to do to turn it around?