Social justice? What is that really? Say a millionaire walking past a blind beggar with his hands resolutely rammed in his pockets, saying as he walked by, I wish you weren't so poor? And by definition an aspiration?

This is the sort of antisocial garbage we are endlessly subjected to by folks whose only real ambition is to wax fat as others unnecessarily starve?

Social justice however, is just not giving till we drop but something very different that starts with the notion of equality in education.

Like starters at the barrier, nobody disadvantaged until the race is on, then we are all in the hands of circumstance and serendipity, even if we try our hearts out, like many a suiciding Farmer, driven to suicide by the most desperate drought ravaged debt riddled unrelenting circumstance!

We can and we must do better and not assisted by massively counterproductive privatization, that has only served to push energy prices and all that depends on it, through the roof!

And compounded by parasitical and entirely counter productive profit demanding middlemen, who add nothing but their profit demands and purely allegorical choice, which is where they derive their profits as commissions, which to serve genuine social justice ought to be outlawed and replaced by a standard fee for service, given some service has actually been proffered?

This parasitical practice in all its forms and guises, effectively doubles the cost of living and doing business, and by implication halves social justice outcomes! Not that that would necessarily trouble the mind of an blinkered academic?

Social just demands these things be remedied in order to truly serve genuine multifaceted grass roots social justice. We live in times where many jobs are simply vanishing before our very eyes and means social just has a way to go to ensure we leave nobody behind; and we just don't have to!
TBC Alan B.

True social justice is served by created entrepreneurial opportunities in massive abundance, so anybody with the will and self serving enterprise can lift themselves up by the boots straps with their own determined effort and lawful enterprise.

And available in a land where cooperative enterprise is promoted rather than stifled by massively misguided miscreants? [Take a butchers at Queensland's Maleny Mate.] Or tyrannical brainwashed ideologues/autocrats serving narrow vested interest and a paradigm which sees more and more of our finite wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.

If we would avoid the inevitable outcome of this insanity, we need to do things differently, starting with reversing some recent and self destructive trends, that has only served to decimate the bush and with it Australia. When the bush flourishes, so does Australia!

Moreover, the next boom is going to be the food boom. We can assist and prosper that outcome with a very different mindset that stops using folk up, but puts real value on them, their dreams and aspirations.

We need to embrace really affordable energy, not the profit demands of a few foreign coal miners; and then use a modicum of that energy to drought proof Australia, which will if operating on cooperative capitalism, change Australia to a country where social justice prevails, rather than suppressed or simply ignored or wished/essayed away?

And as that occurs, return affordable housing, energy and a living wage! Even if we must pay folk to consume, just to keep the (largely automated) economy humming along!

We have enough untapped wealth and potential to make every man woman and child living in Australia, virtual millionaires, not that that is doable but rather just a fair-minded aspiration! And an essential mindset in a land where social justice is more than a set of mealy mouthed monosyllabic mantras?
Alan B.

Struth, it appears Don's written an article on social justice without knowing what it is!

Social justice means A FAIR GO FOR ALL!

It's regarded as a core Australian value, so it's surprising that anyone opposes it. But many do, particularly on this board.

Finally true social just has and needs at its heart, genuine tax reform, rather than endless tinkering at the edges, the practice to date?

We could do that by raising the tax free threshold to $50,00.00 With all others paying an unavoidable 15% on all income without exclusion or write offs etc. Meaning, there no longer be any need for reconciliation or tax compliance or accounting costs and would function like a turnover tax as money above the threshold, entered or left accounts. And able to be managed by bank's mainframes and interconnection that automatically, autonomously, exchanged account information overnight.

If everyone earning above the threshold, paid an unavoidable 15%, we'd collect more revenue and be able to abolish all other revenue raising measures? End bracket creep and the destiny of demography! And that's also social justice!

A mandatory bank account would necessarily unlock our social benefits scheme, medicare, registration, licencing, insurance electricity/water supply etc.

In conclusion let me add, we get vastly more bang for our tax buck and vastly improved social justice outcome with a direct funding model for both health and education, coupled to regional autonomy.

Meaning in health i.e., the available (limited) funds would bypass the states, but be directed by health consumers and best practice, bench marked outcomes? Given accurate hospital/health clinic account keeping and validated result reporting.

Education could be managed similarly, with the available funds directed by the parents, as a means tested education endowment, that could continue progressively enlarged, right through tertiary ed, if there were genuine disadvantage? Which in both cases is where the averaged inherent 30% savings? Could be directed?

Like the accommodation/living/transport costs only kids from the bush or remote locations have to endure, when attending uni campuses, [or hospital wards,] often resulting in expensive counterproductive dropouts by sometimes really gifted scholars! Crippled by lifelong debt, the only real outcome! And hardly real social justice!

Social justice has to be more than an shunt/kick it down the endless road purely academic aspiration, if we want true social justice, but rather the template that guides the managing bureaucracy/outcomes.
Alan B.

“It seems to me that ‘social justice’ is best seen as an aspiration, and that we will never achieve it “

In many ways, Australia has been an over-achiever, and the result has been loss of control of welare and opportunities for bludgers, another one of which was revealed on A Current Affair last night – a woman receiving disability pension because she was 'blind'. As a 'blind' person however, she drove a motor vehicle and held down jobs. Now she has to pay back $209,000 she fraudulently accepted, and it seems that she will not go to jail where she belongs. Penny to a pound she won't pay back much of the $209,000 either.

The Australian idea of 'social justice' is just too rortable, and the four points listed by the writer we are fast losing.

To the Left, social justice is just taking money off people who have earned it and giving that money to people who have not earned it and very often don't need it.

Don Aitken here pretty much outlines social justice, for those who want for nothing.
But for those who lack the cushy ride through life afforded by class and breeding, social justice must have a starting point at a guarantee of a home and food. That is social and that is just!

Wow, lucky we have Aidan here.
Don Aitken struggled in 1500 words to try to put a objective explanation to what the term actually means.

But then Aidan enlightens us with "Fair Go For All", and there we are, problem solved. So if anyone is wondering just how much should be handed out in unemployment benefits, disability pension, age pension, housing benefits, to what degree should there be affirmation action in employment, university entrances, whether there should be set asides in parliamentary seats for special minorities, whether people from troubled childhoods should get special allowances in criminal sentencing, etc then all we simply do is refer to those words of wisdom, "Fair go for all" and the solution is before our eyes.

Time to get away from that ideology Diver Dan, it is just not true, & severely limiting for those who live by it.

Don mentions his lowly beginning, & many of us are very similar.

My father came out of WW11 with a cheap demob suit & 40 pounds. Not much class there.

I went to school from a dirt floor tin shed, while we slowly got not only the money together, but acquired the materials, still in short supply to build a rather poor house. This was nothing special, about half the people in our street, on the outskirts of Bathurst were doing the same. Many of the sheds were built out of flattened out 4 gallon kerosene tins, not just because it was cheap tin, but because getting real galvanised iron was like winning the lottery.

I used to have to pick the frogs out of our well water, so mum would not see them, or she wouldn't have drunk it. It took almost 3 years to get our first 1000 gallon rain water tank. We had "running water" by dint of me pumping it by hand, up to the 44 gallon drum on the roof.

That up bringing has made me careful with my money, the reason I am pretty comfortable now. No "cushy ride through life afforded by class and breeding" for me, or for most of those I know, just hard work, & not wasting everything we have earned.

I had very little in 1976 when I met my wife, but in 15 years we had 3 kids, & a nice debt free 30 acre farm, & a lot of fun getting there. It's not that hard if you don't mind a bit of work, & use your money wisely.

Dear Hasbeen,

The only problem with housing today is that government no longer allows you to build your own walls and roof as your family did, to make your own life.

You certainly grew up in better times!

Social justice means no justice.

There seems to be some confusion between 'social justice' and 'social equality': but the first is a function of a 'fair go', equal opportunity, and the second is a function of one of its companions, effort.

So the two, equal opportunity and equal effort, might bring us closer to 'equal outcome' or 'social equality', but there is no reason or compulsion for 'social justice' to have 'equal outcomes', if different people put in different amounts of effort.

It amazes me to see young people out of work (and whingeing about it) when there are backpackers doing so many of the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs like fruit-picking, doing them well and being paid well enough for it to continue travelling around Australia.

Of course luck and inheritance come into play. But I have no sympathy for any able-bodied person who refuses to do what work is available. Forty years ago, in the days of the CES, unemployment benefits automatically cut out once work was available in the area. Fair enough. Get out and see Australia, it's a character-building experience.

As an ex-Marxist, I always thought that the New Society would be one in which everybody contributed equally, it never occurred to me to be one in which everybody benefited equally without contributing. That sounded like aristocratic decadence to me.

I hope we will never have - nor, I expect, can we ever have - some crack-pot government system which endorses, or levies, 'equal outcome'. I worked for a bit on an Aboriginal community, where the Aboriginal farm manager (my brother-in-law) always found it hard to get enough workers, mainly for the morning shift in the new dairy: one of his worker-mates told me once, "You know, these fellas here think there's no difference between watching TV eight hours a day, and working eight hours a day." Spot-on. I eagerly look forward to the day when bludgers can tell the difference and are glad of it.

Joe

Hasbeen. I think you confuse social justice with social ambition; call it keeping up with the Joneses.

I think social justice is akin to a sinking boat. Women and children to the life boats. Society should operate with the same ethic.

What is worrisome is the propensity to denigrate welfare. It is the welfare system which should actually be praised. Welfare is the largest contributor to social justice, which is not the same as equality.

It is true, the welfare system as it stands needs a good shake out, but not the type of shake out currently underway as a cost cutting measure.

Hasbeen...if your so well off now, maybe you should be magnanimous and return your pension to the Government, and assist them to right the wrongs of social injustice by giving money to the poor through the welfare system...

Hi Dan,

"Hasbeen...if your so well off now, maybe you should be magnanimous and return your pension to the Government, and assist them to right the wrongs of social injustice by giving money to the poor through the welfare system."

Yeah, right. Work all your life and contribute your pension to those who won't ? Not bloody likely.

Joe

Yuyutsu
Your right. We, the children of the immediate post war period, were given great advantages over the children of today.
Sadly it appears to have been transformed into arrogance as its reward!

Joe..
I think you are looking at the problem of social injustice with one eye firmly shut, and the other up the chimney.
Cheers.

Hi Alan B, i think you have a nice point and i hope we could achieve this as well.

Hi ttbn,i think the right justice needs to be put in place, because things might still be the way it was if something is not done.

diver dan, i think you have a nice view about social justice, in my opinion no one should take advantage of the common any more and no one should be left behind.

Hi Rollyczar,

Yes, if people have put the effort in, they shouldn't be 'left behind'. But if they haven't, then frankly I don't give a toss about them, provided they are able-bodied and of reasonable mental competence.

If people don't make the effort, then they take the consequences. They are NOT owed anything. They can sit and wait all they like. History won't feel sorry for them, or wait for them, it will just keep rolling over, and their one-and-only lives will have meant nothing for the rest of eternity.

Joe

OK, so people know what social justice is, but one suggestion simply replaced one slogan by another: a fair go for all. What is a fair go? How would you achieve it in practice? Why do you think what you propose is fair? Fair to whom? Why them? And so on.

Just try a little policy implementation, and not just chant. See how far you can get.

Social justice used to be about equal opportunity.

Now Social justice is about equal outcomes whether one is smart or as thick as soup, hardworking or lazy, etc.

There are no free passes in life.

ttbn using one example from that doyen of (no) credibility, A Current Affair, as some sort of evidence to back up the as usual non-existent argument. Priceless.

Don asks a very relevant question: what do we, each of us, mean by social justice ? Of course, it relates to ongoing discussions about what our values might be, or what values do we prefer.

Maybe we could try this from a different angle: what values do we oppose, feel disgust for, wouldn't have a bar of ? What constitutes a lack or denial of social justice ? What would we consider UNjust ?

Of course, surely (?), the mistreatment or confinement of children or women or the elderly or gays etc. would be something that Australians generally would oppose ? Why's that ? Because we are appalled when people, otherwise defenceless, get mistreated. Isn't that part of our notion of social justice ? Part of our value system ?

We generally believe that, on the whole, everybody should have more or less equal opportunity to achieve, to do something with their (one and only) lives, that barriers shouldn't be put in their way ? Usually for some of the same groups as above ? Don't our notions of fairness relate closely with our underlying beliefs in social equality ?

Generally, Australians oppose the silencing of opinion, and the threat against anybody expressing themselves. Doesn't this say something about how we value an open society, open discussion, a belief that teasing out issues is healthy and, probably, can't be suppressed in any case ?

Of course, one Australian 'value' is reticence: an unwillingness to have to spell out what our values actually are, although we are all quick to condemn something vile like the Manchester murders - perhaps because we take our values so much for granted, in ourselves and in each other, that it's sort of offensive to have to remind anybody of what we think are right and wrong, as if they're idiots.

In other words, we know what we like, even if we can't put it into nice-flowing prose. But probably we need to make the implicit, explicit.

Thanks for raising this issue, Don. This is its time.

Joe