Our working lives are about to change. Time, and the PM, will tell if we’re better off

July 13, 2026 — 5:00am

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In 2011, Justin Timberlake starred in a science fiction movie called In Time. In the bleak future of the film, citizens traded not money, but time. The logic of this dystopian economy was simple: if you accumulated more time, you lived longer. If you ran out of time, you died.

The film came to mind after the prime minister added a sharp new line to his repertoire. Justifying his recent tax changes, he said those who live off wages or salaries deserved the chance to buy a house just as much as those who got their money in other ways – from inheritance, say, or investments. This is how he described workers: “Most Australians have nothing to sell but their time. Nothing to give but their hard work.”

At first glance, this reads like a straightforward description of reality. But if we stare at it a little longer, the phrase becomes interesting – because of the ways it does, and does not, match reality. Deliberately or not, Anthony Albanese has highlighted one of the central political issues of this era.

We know we are paid for our work. And we know that this work requires time. How many of us, though, think of ourselves as “selling our time”? My suspicion is we usually feel as though we are paid for the work itself, the completion of tasks. The time is necessary, but is not the product itself.

I wonder if this is a way of comforting ourselves for the sadder truth. There is something intangibly bleak, isn’t there, about “selling........

© The Age