Australia is full of systems that reward the worst possible behaviour. Instead of ideas that fix problems, we’ve built incentives that make them worse, often deliberately, because someone powerful benefits. Here are ten of the ugliest examples.
- Negative Gearing & Property Hoarding
Instead of incentivising new housing supply, the Australian governments policy for the past thirty years has been to encourage hoarding existing homes, rewarding investors mainly. The more properties you own, the more tax breaks you get. Choking the already low supply is pushing up prices, pushing renters into poverty, and locking an entire generation out of home ownership. It’s a system that actively rewards worsening the housing crisis. - Wage Suppression and Economic Sabotage
Australian employers have kept wages and salaries flat for decades under the logic of “cost cutting”, or guise of “weathering the storm”. The perverse outcome? Workers have less to spend, the economy slows down, productivity slumps, and inequality deepens. When an aforementioned storm passes, things never actually go back to normal. Squeezing workers to “save”, business ends up starving its own customers. Limiting future growth and profit across the board. - Private Health Kickbacks
Billions in subsidies flow to private health insurance while public hospitals are left to rot. Hardworking people in public are burned out and pushed out into other work, or private for their own survival. Taxpayers fund a two-tier system where those who can pay get prompt care, while everyone else waits in corridors or dies waiting. Meanwhile healthcare officials shamelessly defend this two tier system and gaslight the public like they have no idea about public healths problems. It’s not healthcare, it’s rationing with corporate profits built in. - School Funding Backwards
Australia pours more money per student into elite private schools – who already charge massive fees – while public schools scrape by. The rich get Olympic pools and equestrian centres, the poor get demountables and shortages. Public money entrenches inequality instead of fixing it, which is compounding issues of productivity and crime down the line. Australia used to claim to be an egalitarian society and a strong public school system was one of the core pillars of that well regarded past society. - Aged Care for Shareholders, Not Elders
Aged care operators collect government subsidies meant for vulnerable people, have power of attortney and gag orders over vulnerable people and yet their only incentives are around profits and dividends. Despite record amounts of money being in the industry, residents are left with understaffed facilities, poor food, and dangerous conditions. Unfortunately despite good funding, the for profit incentive in this is to cut corners on human care to maximise shareholder returns. - Centrelink’s Punish to Save Model
The welfare system is designed not to support but to deter, and to punish. Starve people with below-poverty payments, bury them in punitive compliance rules, and withhold money illegally (see Robodebt). Every dollar denied is “saved” – but at the cost of homelessness, suicide, and long-term poverty. The truth is that they maintain unemployment at a certain level, but are scared of enouraging that so they punish anyone who is in this category. Even if it’s not temporary and they have a long term medical condition. A welfare system that doesn’t care if any happens. - Mining Royalties vs. Environmental Wreckage
State governments pocket tiny royalties from mining companies and look the other way while land, water, and sacred sites are destroyed. When politicians retire, they end up working on the boards and executive teams of the companies they were legislating to protect the public from. In effect, they are getting jobs to help the mining companies navigate laws they wrote while in government. The devastating cleanup costs and effects of climate damage are left for future taxpayers. Short-term revenue today, permanent destruction tomorrow. - Justice for Crimes of the Wealthy
If you’re rich or well-connected, your crimes are reported with smiling family photos and sympathetic backstories. It doesn’t matter if you commit a crime that in inexcusable such a drinking and driving or molesting a minor. The law will look for leniency and even the media will form a protective propaganda shield around someone with money or power. However if you’re poor, you’re paraded as a monster before court trial – even for minor infractions. Wealth buys you PR spin and leniency, poverty gets you the full weight of the law with no remorse. - Political Donations Make Policy for Sale
Mining giants, developers, gambling firms all pour money into the major parties. In return, they get sweetheart laws and watered-down regulation. For a fraction of their profits, they can rewrite the rules of the game, while ordinary citizens can barely get a meeting. At this point, the Labor and Liberal parties of Australia are just different colour schemes for the same type of government. Labor claims to help people, while looking out for corporations. Liberals claim to help small business, while only helping their mates. - The Sabotage of the ABC
ABC News was long regarded as a national institution, until recently. A public broadcaster designed to inform the nation now chases clicks like a tabloid. Why? Because since a tabloid CEO took over engagement metrics are the numbers it uses to justify funding to politicians. So we get fluff, “human interest” angles, and soft-focus coverage of the powerful. Politically motivated hires, and departures, have also robbed the organisation of its indepedence and relevance. Australia has truly lost a national icon to politics.
From housing to health to media, the pattern is clear: the system has been broken on purpose. It’s not broken, it’s working exactly as designed rewarding speculation, exploitation, and short-term gains at the expense of ordinary Australian people. If we want different outcomes, we need to change the incentives, not just the rhetoric.