There is a significant rift between top wages (ie CEO salaries @$10 mil + & the minimum wage sub $40K P/a Also service providers such as GPs, Specialists Solicitors & Accountants earning over $300K P/A & the majority of the workforce working for sub $60K P/A
We live in the "Lucky Country" where the "Luck" traditionally was based on resource wealth but unfortunately nowadays that Resource Wealth is concentrated in the hand s of a few (mostly foreign multinationals) overseen by successive Governments whose politicians have lined their own pockets and bugger those who elected them!
In Saudi Arabia a local worker pays no personal income tax as a means of distributing national resource wealth, In Norway national resource wealth is invested in the Norwegian Sovereign Fund of which every Norweigan shares equitably.
In Aus we have the "Future Fund" which guarantees millionaire politicians & millionaire top end of the civil service a comfortable retirement and bugger the rest of Australia. There is not much difference here between what 3rd World Countries do (Politicians & top end of Government Officials pocket public money as the go) and our mob who have commandeered national wealth (selling Comm Bank, Qantas, Telstra etc) in the form of the Future Fund by a stroke of the legislative pencil.
Just have a look at who owns our major mines (BHP 92% foreign owned & RIO 88% foreign owned) with the lions shares of profits going overseas.
So, IMO, the right way to achieve a decent UBI for all Aussies is to tax the foreign entities who are now skimming our massive national resources wealth and pissing the proceeds against the walls of Wall ST, London, Tokyo & Shanghai.
Our Government could start by lifting the tax free threshold from $18K P/A to $60K AUD (Average wage for 2018 was $60K USD see above).
When it comes to war & sport we're all great mates but when it comes to exercising that mateship in normal life we tragically fall short and act more like pseudo-yanks rather than dinky die Aussies.
It seems silly for a person on $19/hr ($39,500 gross) to be paying $3,300 PAYE tax to the Government while GPs on $300K + P/A are aggressively reducing their PAYE tax by family income splitting ( family trusts) and operating under the tax haven of a Pty Company structure where cars, phones, mortgages & annual holidays are all tax deductible!
