Extract from The Guardian
That work would be sequenced with the existing intergenerational
reports produced by the Treasury, the shadow treasurer will say in a
speech he is due to give to the Chifley Research Centre on Tuesday.
Bowen will argue that Australia regularly professes to be the land of the fair go but governments need to ensure the egalitarian “dream” has substance behind it.
“We can’t let the well-earned achievements of some mask a cold, hard assessment of the situation in the broad,” he will say.
Opportunity “gets a lot of lip service in the rhetoric of politicians”, Bowen’s speech says. “All political parties claim to believe that all Australians, regardless of their background or their parent’s wealth, can grow to their full potential,” he will say. “But is this actually the case?”
The shadow treasurer will argue governments taking practical steps to bring about equality of opportunity “is now more important than ever before” and he says the proposed data set would form the bedrock of a policy response ensuring that people are in a position to improve their circumstances over the course of a lifetime.
Bowen says Australia needs to “calmly and soberly” assess whether additional steps are needed to ensure the starting line is even. “You can’t improve something unless you have the data to measure your progress,” he will say in the speech.
He will point to work undertaken by Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, who have found that social mobility in the US relates to the neighbourhoods people grow up in, and so social mobility should be tackled on a local level.
“In my view, the five-yearly equality of opportunity report would become an important part of our national discourse and, in time, hopefully, an important document that no future Liberal government would dare abolish,” Bowen’s speech says.
“Like productivity and economic growth statistics, this report would help enshrine equality of opportunity as a central focus in the national debate about Australia’s advancement and economic development.”
Bowen’s speech, to be delivered on Tuesday night, is one of a series of public interventions from the shadow treasurer making the case for an open economy and advocating policies of inclusive growth to bolster the middle class while promoting economic growth.
Brexit in the UK, the rise of One Nation in the federal election and the election of Donald Trump to the White House have kicked off political debates around the world as politicians attempt to grapple with the voter backlash against globalisation, trade liberalisation and so-called “establishment” politics.
Bowen will draw on some of his background in the speech, noting his discovery during first-year economics at Sydney University that he was the only person in his tutorial group from the western suburbs of Sydney and the only student from a comprehensive public high school.
He says it became “clearer to me then than ever before that, 20 years after Gough Whitlam’s attempts to open up universities for all, we still had a long way to go”.
The shadow treasurer will argue that equality of opportunity and social mobility have become more urgent concerns because of the underlying conditions sitting behind the current political backlash – principally that income inequality is rising around the world.
He will say it is fashionable in some quarters to concede that equality of opportunity is important but to argue that income equality is not.
Bowen says it is a mistake to argue it is important for governments to help people to get to the starting line but then not care about what happens in the race.
“Put simply, the more unequal a society, the harder it will be for people to be mobile within it,” he will say. “Or, conversely, the less opportunity there is for people to reach their potential can make an unequal society even more unequal as those at the bottom of the socioeconomic class can’t even get to the starting line.”
Bowen will argue that Australia regularly professes to be the land of the fair go but governments need to ensure the egalitarian “dream” has substance behind it.
“We can’t let the well-earned achievements of some mask a cold, hard assessment of the situation in the broad,” he will say.
Opportunity “gets a lot of lip service in the rhetoric of politicians”, Bowen’s speech says. “All political parties claim to believe that all Australians, regardless of their background or their parent’s wealth, can grow to their full potential,” he will say. “But is this actually the case?”
The shadow treasurer will argue governments taking practical steps to bring about equality of opportunity “is now more important than ever before” and he says the proposed data set would form the bedrock of a policy response ensuring that people are in a position to improve their circumstances over the course of a lifetime.
Bowen says Australia needs to “calmly and soberly” assess whether additional steps are needed to ensure the starting line is even. “You can’t improve something unless you have the data to measure your progress,” he will say in the speech.
He will point to work undertaken by Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, who have found that social mobility in the US relates to the neighbourhoods people grow up in, and so social mobility should be tackled on a local level.
“In my view, the five-yearly equality of opportunity report would become an important part of our national discourse and, in time, hopefully, an important document that no future Liberal government would dare abolish,” Bowen’s speech says.
“Like productivity and economic growth statistics, this report would help enshrine equality of opportunity as a central focus in the national debate about Australia’s advancement and economic development.”
Bowen’s speech, to be delivered on Tuesday night, is one of a series of public interventions from the shadow treasurer making the case for an open economy and advocating policies of inclusive growth to bolster the middle class while promoting economic growth.
Brexit in the UK, the rise of One Nation in the federal election and the election of Donald Trump to the White House have kicked off political debates around the world as politicians attempt to grapple with the voter backlash against globalisation, trade liberalisation and so-called “establishment” politics.
Bowen will draw on some of his background in the speech, noting his discovery during first-year economics at Sydney University that he was the only person in his tutorial group from the western suburbs of Sydney and the only student from a comprehensive public high school.
He says it became “clearer to me then than ever before that, 20 years after Gough Whitlam’s attempts to open up universities for all, we still had a long way to go”.
The shadow treasurer will argue that equality of opportunity and social mobility have become more urgent concerns because of the underlying conditions sitting behind the current political backlash – principally that income inequality is rising around the world.
He will say it is fashionable in some quarters to concede that equality of opportunity is important but to argue that income equality is not.
Bowen says it is a mistake to argue it is important for governments to help people to get to the starting line but then not care about what happens in the race.
“Put simply, the more unequal a society, the harder it will be for people to be mobile within it,” he will say. “Or, conversely, the less opportunity there is for people to reach their potential can make an unequal society even more unequal as those at the bottom of the socioeconomic class can’t even get to the starting line.”
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