Growing inequality is a 'ticking time-bomb', Nobel prize-winner warns

Professor Muhammad Yunus, who spoke to Fairfax Media ahead of an Australian visit this week, has also called on the Australian corporate sector to radically transform the way they think and to create "selfless " or "social businesses" that solve societal issues with market-based solutions.

Professor Yunus said business needed to remember that humans were not just "money-making robots and that capitalism could and should be humane."

His comments come after Forbes magazine issued its updated billionaires list last month, revealing it had been a "record year" for the world's richest, with the number of billionaires increasing by 13 per cent to 2,043 and their combined value jumping by 18 per cent to $9.9 trillion.

Professor Yunus said this had to change and warned of a breaking point in the relationship between voters and politicians if the situation was not addressed.

"We've become self-centric people around the world. With so much wealth with the one per cent, this is not a tenable situation, that framework has limited us," he said.

"Unless politicians change the system that is sucking up the wealth for the one per cent... politics will explode," he said. He said the election of US President Donald Trump, who has espoused protectionist economic policies, and the British vote to exit the European Union were "symptoms" of the "frustration" simmering within the public.

But he said change was also up to the corporate sector and urged business to create "selfless business," pointing to how his pioneering of microfinance and design of a "bank for the poor" had transformed the lives of poorer people in Bangladesh and India and throughout the world.

Professor Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below."

An Australian offshoot was established in Australia in 1998 and runs projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia and the Philippines to create income sources for families blighted by poverty.

Grameen Australia's flagship programs include an urban microfinance program for entrepreneurs in Manila, which had raised $1.2 million as of last year. One of three successful major businesses to grow from the program includes a soap manufacturer who now sells fair-trade soaps to an Australian hotel.

It has raised $1.92 million to fund an automechanic training school in Dhaka and $400,000 to kickstart chicken farming for Cambodians who would otherwise be scavenging landfill sites to survive. In this program, experts in free-trade chicken farming from Australia have advised locals on how to farm poultry for high-end consumption.

Professor Yunus said there were numerous social issues in Australia that could be solved with his social business model including indigenous disadvantage and assisting with the integration of newly-arrived migrants and refugees.

But he stressed meaningful change would require the right partnership between regulators, business and the public.

"Citizens should not sit on their hands," he said. "Even the poorest people can take the step up."

And he said there were plenty of areas where established businesses could help address social issues simply by "putting on a different pair of glasses," and bringing "a completely different perspective," to the way they operate.

Professor Yunus pointed to potato chip maker McCain which used to discard its so-called "ugly vegetables."

"Around 20 per per cent of them were thrown away," he said, until an executive thought to turn the vegetables into potato soup. In Europe - where nearly a third of fresh vegetables are discarded because they don't conform to standard appearances - they are bought and chopped up to sell as frozen ready-to-cook-fresh vegetables.

He said there were already social business ventures in Australia, including Code Like a Girl, which promotes women involvement in the male-dominated tech sector, Goodstart, an early education program, and Catalysr and Settlement Services International - two start ups assisting refugees.

Professor Muhammad Yunus will be appearing in conversation with the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor Peter Hartcher at the Hyatt Regency in Sydney on Tuesday.

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