Australian billionaires' wealth rose by $600,000 per day in 2025: new report

A new report has found the average Australian billionaire saw their wealth rise by almost $600,000 per day in 2025, while one in three households faced food insecurity.

Oxfam Australia, a branch of the global charity organisation, found that 48 billionaires held more wealth than the bottom 40 per cent - almost 11 million people of Australia's population of 27 million.

And their wealth only increased last year, growing a collective $10.5 billion.

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Mining magnate Gina Rinehart was the richest person in Australia last year with $38.1 billion, followed by property developer Harry Triguboff with $29.6 billion, recycling businessman Anthony Pratt with $25.8 billion, co-founder of software company Atlassian and investor Scott Farquhar with $21.4 billion and mining tycoon and former politician Clive Palmer with $20.1 billion, according to the Australian Financial Review's 2025 Rich List.

Triguboff, for example, had a wealth increase equivalent to the amount needed to build 10,600 new homes.

The latest analysis is in line with a global trend that saw the world's 3000 billionaires' wealth rise 16 per cent to $27.7 trillion last year - the highest level in history.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, became the first to briefly surpass half a trillion dollars and is on track to be the first trillionaire.

Meanwhile, more than 3.7 million people live in poverty in Australia, according to Oxfam.

One in three households was found to have faced food insecurity last year, which meant they either stressed about or struggled to put food on the table.

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Oxfam Australia chief executive Jennifer Tierney said rising billionaire wealth exposed a failing system.

"While millions of Australians are cutting back on essentials, struggling with soaring rents and mortgages, and watching global crises like conflict in Yemen, Sudan and Syria receive dwindling humanitarian support, Australia's billionaires are accumulating extraordinary wealth at extraordinary speed," she said.

"The gap between those doing it toughest and those benefiting most is stark, and well evidenced."

Oxfam called on the Australian government to reduce the gap by reforming the tax system to effectively tax billionaires, including ending the capital gains tax discount and phasing out negative gearing.

Greens treasury spokesperson, Nick McKim, who is chairing a Senate inquiry into the capital gains tax discount, agreed that Labor needed to make billionaires pay their fair share.

"The Oxfam report shows exactly what's broken in our economy," he said.

"While renters and working people are doing it tough, billionaires are pocketing more than half a million dollars a day, turbo-charged by tax breaks like the capital gains tax discount.

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"Ending handouts to the extreme wealthy would free up billions for housing, cost-of-living relief and the services Australians rely on."

Research by national housing campaign Everybody's Home has found the federal government was losing tens of billions of dollars each year in forgone revenue through negative gearing deductions and the capital gains tax discount.

NSW Treasury, in a submission to the inquiry, called for the federal government to review the capital gains discount as it was found to have a damaging effect on housing affordability and home ownership and was disproportionately skewed to benefit the rich.

But federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has ruled out any changes to negative gearing or the capital gains tax discount after Labor's promises of tax reform cost the party at the 2016 and 2019 elections.

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