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!