Australia’s global performance: falling behind

Very high rates of household debt can act as a brake on the rate of economic growth and pose serious risks to the economy, but the non-economic effects on family and community are also significant as more people are worried about staying afloat.

Because wage growth has not kept up with the cost of living, the goal of many Australians to own their own home is increasingly unattainable. Australia is now the third most unaffordable housing market within the OECD. That has a serious social effect on the ability for Australians to build a family or plan their lives.

Astoundingly, the Liberals' only response is to invent more programs to pour petrol on an already raging house fire, by pushing up demand and increasing house prices. So far they've resisted the stupidest idea – to let people use their superannuation retirement savings to buy houses – but even that economic idiocy has vocal supporters in Morrison's government.

COVID has been great for Australian billionaires, whose combined worth was assessed to be 52.4% higher in December 2020, than at the same time in 2019.

Yet even before COVID, Australia had become the 11^th most unequal nation in the OECD under the Liberals. Just 20% of Australians holding 64% of the nation's wealth.

Scott Morrison's policies just make inequality worse. In responding to COVID he privatised much of the recovery, with nearly 2 million Australians forced to rip $35.9 billion from their superannuation just to survive. Yet he handed billions of dollars in JobKeeper to profitable companies to pay dividends and executive bonuses.

Our trade performance has also fallen. The latest data ranked Australia's export diversity at 84^th globally – a level last seen in the 1960s. In 2018, Australia ranked only 87th out of 133 countries globally in economic complexity, our performance effectively stagnating.

Australia's greenhouse gas emissions per capita have been the highest in the world under the Liberals and things are getting worse.

Under Scott Morrison, Australia ranks second worst globally for Government climate policy, and on climate action is now ranked dead last out of 193 countries in the latest UN-backed Sustainable Development Report. Once a world leader, to receive the lowest scoreisa withering repudiation of the Coalition government.

The Liberals' failures on climate change are mirrored by their failures to protect and enhance Australia's natural environment. Australia has the second highest level of biodiversity deterioration in the world. That's not a prize we should be winning.

Australia's wild koala population is now at real risk of extinction. Studies suggest that possibly as few at 48,000 koalas still exist in the wild.

Over the last eight years, the land area of native forest in Australia has shrunk. Australia now has the highest rate of loss in the world at 34.44% - more than three times the second ranked country, the US and sixty times worse than 10th ranked Finland.