Tipping

Another positive aspect I've noticed about Australian society is their attitude toward tipping. It's not expected, and hardly practised. I believe tipping is an inefficient system within society, and harmful to the average citizen. It's essentially a form of tax, an employer subsidy courtesy of the consumer. Instead of being paid a fair wage, the employee relies upon tips from patrons instead of their relatively low base wage. This is basically a robbery during times of economic hardship, when less business leads to less tips and thus less money in the pocket of the employee, who can't rely on an average industry hourly rate of $7.91-11.49[1] (unlike Australia, where service workers are paid close to $20 an hour) to survive, let alone support a family.

One could argue that tipping encourages better service and harder work, but I must ask, is it really worth how much we pay for gratuity? I believe more responsibility for compensation should be shifted to the employer, with mandatory wage rises for the services where tipping is common. This would leave money in the consumers pocket and provide more secure employment for people in the service industry.