The term ‘fair go’ is an Australian invention; it derives from the English ‘fair play’ and for a long time was used in a similar way to refer to keeping to the rules, treating people equally or giving someone a decent chance. More recently it has come to stand for egalitarianism in society at large. So if Australians believe in the ‘fair go’ they should be committed, it is said, to a truly egalitarian society. Egalitarianism has been a strong force in our history but because it has different forms and meanings, there is plenty of room for disagreement over whether modern Australia is a ‘fair go’ society. Significantly no-one will argue against ‘fair go’ as a principle.
NO ‘BUNYIP ARISTOCRACY’
Migrants from Britain in the nineteenth century wanted to escape a society where birth gave privileges; they wanted opportunity to be open to all. In 1853 when William Wentworth proposed that an aristocracy be created in New South Wales to provide for a House of Lords on the English model, there was an uproar. The most effective attack on the plan was made by Daniel Deniehy, a well-educated son of convicts and a radical republican. He spoke at a protest rally in the Victoria Theatre.
I will endeavour to make some of the proposed nobility pass before the stage of our imagination, as the ghost of Banquo walked along in the vision of Macbeth, so that we might have a fair view of these harlequin aristocrats (laughter), these Botany Bay magnificos (laughter), these Australian mandarins (roars of laughter). Let them walk across the stage in all the pomp and circumstances of hereditary titles. First, then, in the procession stalks the hoary Wentworth. But I cannot imagine that to such a head the strawberry leaves would add any honour. (Cheers) Next comes the native aristocrat Mr James Macarthur, he would I assume, aspire to the coronet of an earl, I will call him the Earl of Camden, and I suggest for his coat of arms a field vert, the heraldic term for green – (great cheers and laughter) – and emblazoned on this field would be a rum keg of a New South Wales order of chivalry. There was also the colonial starred Terence Aubrey Murray, with more crosses and orders – not perhaps orders of merit – than a state of mandarin-hood. (Loud laughter)
But though their weakness is ridiculous, I can assure you that these pigmies might do a great deal of mischief. They would bring contempt on a country whose interest I am sure you all have at heart, until even the poor Irishman in the streets of Dublin would fling his jibe at the Botany Bay aristocrats.
I am puzzled how to classify them. They could not aspire to the miserable and effete dignity of the grandees of Spain. (Laughter). They had antiquity of birth, but these I would defy any naturalist properly to classify. But perhaps it is only a specimen of the remarkable contrariety that exists at the Antipodes. Here you all know the common water mole was transformed into the duck-billed platypus, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, I suppose we are to be favoured with a bunyip aristocracy.
OPPORTUNITY FOR THE SMALL MAN
In the 1850s, when hundreds of thousands of gold seekers arrived, most of the good land was in the hands of the squatters, who leased their runs at low rental. The popular cry was that the land be thrown open at cheap rates so that ordinary people could become small farmers. Charles Thatcher gave the land reform movement a song.
Hurrah for Australia the golden,
Where men of all nations now toil,
To none will we e’er be beholden
Whilst we’ve strength to turn up the soil;
There’s no poverty here to distress us,
’Tis the country of true liberty,
No proud lords can ever oppress us,
But here we’re untrammelled and free.
Then hurrah for Australia the golden,
Where men of all nations now toil,
To none will we e’er be beholden
Whilst we’re able to turn up the soil.
Oh, government hear our petition,
Find work for the strong willing hand,
Our dearest and greatest ambition
Is to settle and cultivate land:
Australia’s thousands are crying
For a home in the vast wilderness,
Whilst millions of acres are lying
In their primitive wild uselessness.
Then hurrah for Australia, &c.
Upset squatterdom’s domination,
Give every poor man a home,
Encourage our great population,
And like wanderers no more we’ll roam;
Give, in mercy, a free scope to labour,
Uphold honest bold industry,
Then no-one will envy his neighbour,
But contented and happy will be.
Then hurrah for Australia, &c.
NO SNOBBISHNESS
Charles Bean, later the official historian of Australia’s part in World War I, in The Dreadnought of Darling (1911) welcomes the absence of snobbishness.
In the outside country life, whether pastoral or at the mining camps, is above all things simple. On the land – you go on making money until drought, or pest, or fire, or flood knocks you down, and then you begin again. The demeanour with which he takes those disasters, when they come upon him, is the most lovable thing about the up-country Australian. Day after day news will come in from the paddocks of more cattle dead or dying with the tick pest, or sheep dwindling through want of feed – it is almost always want of feed, not want of water. Everybody knows that ‘the boss’ must be feeling as if his heart’s blood were draining away; and yet from the conversation around the breakfast table you would hardly know there was a tick in Queensland. If things get better they may pull through and start again even stronger than their neighbours; if they get worse the boys may have to go off and work for somebody else, and the girls will enter a tea or flower shop in Sydney or Melbourne; or the old man may perhaps be left by the banks as manager of the run he once owned.
In a country like that it is impossible for money to be a criterion in social position – and the mere possession of money has not a tithe of the admiration which it gets in older countries. I have not known a man or a boy in Australia who showed the least shamefacedness in owning himself poor when he was in rich company – I do not believe even a germ of that feeling exists, and one devoutly hopes it never may. It means there is an almost entire absence in Australia of any striving to keep up the appearance of being richer than you are.
In the same way the fact that, in Australian opinion, any calling is honourable so long as it is honest, is probably due to the ideas of the back country. In the back country, where a man is face to face with nature all the time and fighting her for all he is worth, his success, and indeed his very life, depends on facing the facts – there is no time or use for frills. If a man is a refined and educated man, then he takes the position of one whether he keeps a store, or manages a post office, or a police station, or a sheep run. Without damaging himself socially he can drive a coach or a bullock waggon.
The effect of this pastoral life has always been all against the false incentives and ideals and the whole hopeless crippling bias which are given to life by snobbishness. One could not pretend to claim that there is no snobbishness in Australia; there is a fair amount of it in certain circles. But I think it is not in the sentiment of the people, and there is this powerful influence of the out-back life which may be relied on to fight against it all the time; so that the prospect really seems to be that with the younger generations it may grow less rather than more.
Bean was careful to say he was discussing the attitude of men and boys. Charles Dilke, an English visitor of the 1860s, noticed different attitudes between men and women in his Greater Britain (1868).
The first settlers were active, bustling men of fairly even rank or wealth, none of whom could brook the leadership of any other. The only way out of the difficulty was the adoption of the rule, ‘All of us to be equal, and the majority to govern’, but there is no conception of the nature of democracy, as the unfortunate Chinese have long since discovered. The colonial democrats understand ‘democracy’ as little as the party which takes the name in the United States; but there is at present no such party in the colonies as the Great Republican Party of America.
Democracy cannot always remain an accident in Australia: where once planted, it never fails to fix its roots; but even in America its growth has been extremely slow. There is at present in Victoria and New South Wales a general admission among the men of the existence of equality of conditions, together with a perpetual rebellion on the part of their wives to defeat democracy, and to reintroduce the old ‘colonial court’ society, and resulting class divisions. The consequence of this distinction is that the women are mostly engaged in elbowing their way; while among their husbands there is no such thing as the pretending to a style, a culture, or a wealth which the pretender does not possess, for the reason that no male colonist admits the possibility of the existence of a social superior. Like the American ‘democrat’, the Australian will admit that there may be any number of grades below him, so long as you allow that he is at the top; but no republican can be stauncher in the matter of his own equality with the best.
NO BOSSING
Richard Twopeny in Town Life in Australia (1883) describes how working people expected to be treated.
The Australian working-man is perhaps too well paid to suit us poor folks who are dependent upon him; but, for all that, comfortable means bring an improvement in the man as well as in his condition. It is very trying to have – as I recently had – to go to four plumbers before I could get one to do a small job for me, and still more trying to find the fourth man fail me after he had promised to come. Such accidents are of everyday occurrence in colonial life, and they make one doubt the advantages of a wealthy working-class. But, independent and difficult to please as the colonial working-man is, his carelessness is only a natural consequence of the value set on his labour. Provided he does not drink, you can get as good a day’s work out of him as at home. He will pick his time as to when he will do your job, and hesitate whether he will do it at all; but having once started on it, he generally does his best for you. Too often the sudden increase of wages is too much for his mental equilibrium, and a man who was sober enough as a poor man at home, finds no better use for his loose cash than to put it into the public-house till. But as a class I do not think Australian workingmen are less sober than those at home. Those who are industrious and careful in a very few years rise to be masters and employers of labour, and are at all times so sure of constant employment that it is no wonder they do not care about undertaking odd jobs. If their manner is as independent as their character, I am far from blaming them for it, though occasionally one could wish they did not confound civility and servility as being equally degrading to the free and independent elector. But when you meet the man on equal terms in an omnibus or on other neutral ground, this cause of complaint is removed. Where he is sure of his equality he makes no attempt to assert it, and the treatment he receives from many parvenu employers is no doubt largely the cause of intrusive assertion of equality towards employers in general.
GOOD WAGES
Leader of the unemployed, Melbourne 1855.
The first and great primary right of all others – the right to live by their labour and support their wives and families in moderate comfort and decent respectability.
Justice Higgins in the ‘Harvester judgement’, 1907.
The test to be applied in ascertaining what are fair and reasonable conditions of remuneration of labour, under the Excise Tariff 1906 is, in the case of unskilled labourers – what are the normal needs of the average employee regarded as a human being living in a civilized community.
ALL THE SAME A FTER THE REVOLUTION?
In 1893 Henry Lawson composed ‘For’Ard’, an attack on the inequality of wealth and a vision of what might replace it. ‘Clown’ in the last verse has its old meaning of a simple ordinary person.
It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
For there’s near a hundred for’ard, and they’re stowed away like sheep –
They are trav’lers for the most part in a straight ’n’ honest path;
But their linen’s rather scanty, an’ there isn’t any bath –
Stowed away like ewes and wethers that is shore ’n’ marked ’n’ draft.
But the shearers of the shearers always seem to travel aft.
In the cushioned cabins, aft,
With saloons ’n’ smoke-rooms, aft –
There is sheets ’n’ best of tucker for the first-salooners, aft.
Our beef is just like scrapin’s from the inside of a hide,
And the spuds were pulled too early, for they’re mostly green inside;
But from somewhere back amidships there’s a smell o’ cookin’ waft,
An’ I’d give my earthly prospects for a real good tuck-out aft –
Ham an’ eggs ’n’ coffee, aft,
Say, cold fowl for luncheon, aft,
Juicy grills an’ toast ’n’ cutlets – tucker a-lor-frongsy, aft.
What’s the use of bein’ bitter? What’s the use of gettin’ mad?
What’s the use of bein’ narrer just because yer luck is bad?
What’s the blessed use of frettin’ like a child that wants the moon?
There is broken hearts an’ trouble in the gilded first saloon!
We are used to bein’ shabby – we have got no overdraft –
We can laugh at troubles for’ard that they couldn’t laugh at aft;
Spite o’ pride an’ tone abaft
(Keepin’ up appearances, aft)
There’s anxiety an’ worry in the breezy cabins aft.
But the curse o’ class distinction from our shoulders shall be hurled,
An’ the influence of Kindness revolutionize the world;
There’ll be higher education for the toilin’ starvin’ clown,
An’ the rich an’ educated shall be educated down;
An’ we all will meet amidships on this stout old earthly craft,
An’ there won’t be any friction ’twixt the classes fore-’n’-aft.
We’ll be brothers, fore-’n’-aft!
Yes, an’ sisters, fore-’n’-aft!
When the people work together, and there ain’t no fore-’n’-aft.
RELIANT OR TOO RELIANT ON GOVERNMENT
Australians came to expect that the government would provide them with ‘fair and reasonable’ conditions. The historian Keith Hancock describes the Australian approach to government in his 1930 book Australia.
Australian democracy has come to look upon the State as a vast public utility, whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The results of this attitude have been defined as le socialisme sans doctrines. Its origins, however, are individualistic, deriving from the levelling tendency of migrations which have destroyed old ranks and relationships and scattered over wide lands a confused aggregate of individuals bound together by nothing save their powerful collectivity. Each of these individuals is a citizen, a fragment of the sovereign people; each of them is a subject who claims his rights – the right to work, the right to fair and reasonable conditions of living, the right to be happy – from the State and through the State.
To the Australian, the State means collective power at the service of individualistic ‘rights.’ Therefore he sees no opposition between his individualism and his reliance upon Government.
There was a minority view – grown stronger in recent times – that Australians were too reliant on government. Henry Wrixon, a long-serving member of the Victorian parliament, made this the subject of his novel Jacob Shumate (1903).
The first thing that attracted the attention of the new MP, when he came down to breakfast a few mornings after election day, was the large heap of letters that lay upon the table awaiting his attention.
He was surprised to find what a number of Cricket Clubs, Rowing Clubs, Tennis Clubs, Racing Clubs, Hare and Hound Clubs, and General Sports Committees were anxious to do him honour.
Then there were the letters which came from people who had learned to cherish a comprehensive trust in their Government. The settlers in the Cote Cote Valley wrote to ask when the Government was going to drain their land; or were they to leave the land after the Government had put them on it? The members of the Tum Tum Fox Club informed the Member that the Department had sent them down rifles to help to destroy the foxes, but where was the ammunition? Did they expect them to kill the foxes without? An indignant parent complained that he did not get the full allowance of sixpence a week per child for bringing his children to school over the limit fixed by law for the allowance – though the road was so bad that he had to put a pair of horses in the trap to carry them. A comparatively poor widow wanted a place for her daughter as a typist, or something respectable, as she could barely make ends meet now with the price of things and the high wage for the house-help. The Art Association of Brassville wanted slight assistance from the Government, or somebody, to enable one of their members to make a painting of the charming copy of Raphael’s ‘La Giardiniera’ that was in the Public Gallery of Miranda.
WHAT’S THE MEANING OF ‘FAIR GO’ ?
In 2004 Peter Saunders of the Centre for Independent Studies took objection to many policies that were urged as being necessary to provide a ‘fair go’. He examined what Australians meant by the term.
All Western liberal democracies recognise the importance of the principle of ‘fairness’, but Australia probably emphasises it more than most. Our belief in the ‘fair go’ has evolved to become part of our national culture, even though it is not entirely clear what this term means.
In the mid-nineteenth century, a ‘fair go’ seems to have referred mainly to the importance of opening up opportunities so that everyone could compete. It was consistent with what today we think of as a meritocratic ideal. In the early decades of federation, however, governments increasingly pursued a national agenda intended to blur social divisions and build a strong sense of belonging and sameness, and the ‘fair go’ ideal in this period came to be identified with the political manipulation of distributional outcomes associated with an egalitarian ethic. This national interventionist strategy has, however, been in retreat for 30 years or more (although it remains relatively strong in the area of social policy), and survey evidence demonstrates that most Australians today have a much broader understanding of ‘fairness’ than mere egalitarianism.
The ‘fair go’ today still recognises the ideal of equalising outcomes, but it also encompasses the competing ideals of meritocracy (reward for effort and talent) and fair exchange (the liberal principle of the right to private property provided it has been acquired in accordance with the rule of law). The egalitarian definition of fairness, which is taken for granted by the social policy intelligentsia as the only relevant definition, does not therefore do justice to what most Australians mean by a ‘fair go’ in the contemporary period. Indeed, if our social affairs intellectuals and pressure groups ever got their way, and taxes and welfare benefits were both raised even higher than they are at present in order to narrow what they call the ‘income gap’, the result would be the very opposite of what most Australians think a ‘fair go’ entails.
IS THE ‘FAIR GO’ OPERATING?
Both major parties have largely abandoned the controls over wages, markets and trade, which had been used to secure ‘fair and reasonable’ conditions. Carmen Lawrence of the Labor Party thinks the ‘fair go’ is slipping away. John Howard, the Liberal prime minister, claims he is still guided by this principle among others.
Carmen Lawrence
As a member of the Labor Party, I have always been passionately committed to egalitarianism – the idea that each person has equal worth; that any limitations on their achievement and their ability to share in society’s goods should be systematically broken down. And that this requires public action and investment.
The conservatives embrace – if they do at all – a pallid version of equal opportunity. They think it is enough to let people step up to the mark and do as well as they can no matter what handicaps they start with. They speak from the vantage point of privilege, blind to their own advantages. They fail to understand that promoting equal opportunity actually requires active intervention to minimise disadvantage and ensure that people’s life chances are more equal; so that the accident of your birth does not cripple your future.
Most Australians still hold firm to the view that ours is an egalitarian society. Indeed, there are some who argue that egalitarianism is the value that defines us. While more of us are uneasy about the widening income and wealth gaps we see, many still appear to accept the boast made by our leaders that ours is a nation of equals where the ethic of a ‘fair go’ is the norm governing our private and public relations. But is this really so?
There is now a great deal of evidence which challenges this comfortable assertion. While researchers may disagree about the extent of the problem, they generally agree that inequality amongst Australians is increasing and that egalitarianism itself may be under threat as a defining social objective. And they all agree that it matters.
I was recently asked to review three new books on the subject of inequality and poverty and I was struck by the fact that although they use different data sources and levels of analysis, all three reached the same conclusion. We are a less equal society than we have ever been.
Fred Argy, in his book Where To From Here? argues that Australia’s distinctive form of egalitarianism evolved over 70 years through institutional regulatory and policy mechanisms, a form of ‘state paternalism’, defined by a commitment to a strong role for government in advancing human wellbeing.
The historic roots of our egalitarian ethic lie in a pragmatic commitment to sharing the wealth of the country and the benefits of productivity, particularly through the award- and wage-fixing system – the ‘wage-earners welfare state’. One of the features of this ‘settlement’ was a recognition that government could be – and should be – a major player in achieving equality. Argy details ‘seven pillars’ which were deliberately created by government action:
– the virtual guarantee of full-time employment,
– the protection of wages and conditions of workers,
– an unconditional needs-based welfare safety net,
– a strongly progressive tax system,
– generous government provision of non-cash benefits such as education, health and housing,
– a balanced distribution of regional economic opportunities and
– the capacity for workers to be involved in workplace decisions affecting their wellbeing.
Argy’s systematic analysis of the extent of erosion of these pillars and the reasons for the decline he identifies makes sobering reading.
John Howard
We believe, as we always have, that ‘the only real freedom is a brave acceptance of unclouded individual responsibility’.
And in making policy since we took office, that encouragement of self-reliance, of giving people choice, of rewarding those who can and do take responsibility for themselves and their families has been at the forefront of our efforts.
Australians are in step with the times – they have and always will place great store in encouraging independence, initiative, of individuals being accountable to themselves.
For instance, the community has overwhelmingly accepted the value of mutual obligation, and in particular ‘working for the dole’. Not to punish young people anaesthetised by passive welfare but to develop their skills and awaken an enthusiasm for independent life. The facts speak for themselves – over 91,000 participants involved in 4000 community projects. Eighty-four per cent believe that their involvement has been worthwhile, improving their skills and restoring their morale.
Similarly, the Tough on Drugs Diversion Programme offers a foothold for young drug offenders sliding down towards lifetime addiction and crime – but only if they’re prepared to take personal responsibility for their recovery.
The far-reaching and fundamental changes to industrial relations law give back power to individual workers.
The incentives for private health insurance encourage people to accept responsibility for their own family’s health.
The child-immunisation programme encourages parents to protect their own children.
The changes to education funding improve the choices available to parents.
Our support for self-funded retirees, for share ownership, for first-home buyers, for elderly Australians wishing to remain in their own homes longer – all these initiatives have as their foundation, a desire to empower and enrich the lives of individual Australians – to make and keep them self-reliant.
And yet whilst self-reliance is an ambition being pursued throughout the world, the Australian way also emphasises a balance with the other principles we hold dear.
And the second of those is to ensure equality of opportunity and equality of treatment, of ‘doing the right thing’ and ensuring that all Australians are given a ‘Fair Go’.
This nation was built on the principle that whatever you earn, whatever your starting point, each one of us is owed a chance to succeed. Each one of us has a right to health, education and opportunity. And each one of us deserves a leg up if times get tough.
For this reason, we have held as immutable an unwavering commitment towards both Medicare and the social security safety net. Despite my political opponents’ attempt to portray the Government as forsaking those in need, the reality is we’ve sought to lift them out of isolation and hardship. I resolved, as Prime Minister, to provide a modern welfare system – not one entrenched in the past – which embraces prevention as much as it affords cure.
We have avoided the relative harshness of the American approach where the needy can often be left penniless. Yet we’ve eschewed the excessive paternalism of some European societies, which leave individuals dependent on bloated and unsustainable public sectors.
THE ESSENCE OF IT
Craig McGregor in Profile of Australia (1966) saw egalitarianism as most evident in the style of social interaction. Forty years ago he saw this casual égalité as under threat, but correctly forecast its survival.
Egalitarianism, in fact, is the persistent motif which runs through Australian culture and the people themselves. One can say many things about Australians: that they are individualistic, informal, easy-going, frank, good-natured – all more or less correct, though there are many Australians who are none of these things – but the feeling that one man is as good as another is the most characteristic quality of social relations, and as an ideal it has power over executive and working man alike. George Nadel, the historian, has argued that Australian nationality is defined by this ‘social ethic’ rather than anything else: ‘The attempt to discover common ground for the members of a new society issued in the search for a unity whose attainment was and is to be evidenced in the social relations of man.’ Australians are generally free of the extreme forms of snobbery, rudeness, and deference which are the outward signs of social antagonism in older countries. The bus driver and conductor regard themselves as equal to any of their passengers, and are treated as such. The skilled tradesman regards himself as every bit as good as the white-collar worker, and sometimes gets paid more. The subtle distinctions in the behaviour of people of one class to another which bedevil European social relations are comparatively absent in Australia.
Often the first thing visitors notice about Australia is this apparent classlessness and social equality: the easy relations which exist between people of all walks of life, the absence of gross privilege, the pleasant sense of camaraderie. (‘I am struck by something indisputably gentle about Australia,’ said Dame Edith Sitwell during her visit in 1963.) This casual égalité is really rather misleading (Australia is not a classless society but one in which most people have gravitated towards the middle), but it exists nonetheless. Even the wealthy feel under pressure to be accepted by ordinary working Australians, rather than the other way around; if the plumber calls to mend the sink it’s imperative to offer him a cup of tea, and I know one or two well-spoken people who automatically adjust their accent to the company in case they should be thought ‘affected’. Australians sit beside the taxi driver on the front seat, drift easily between public and saloon bar in the pub, dislike tipping because it implies a servile relationship. Domestic help is almost impossible to obtain for the same reason. It is the land where nobody calls you ‘Sir’ (except sometimes out of politeness), where arrogance is the worst sin and deference the next. The Australian likes to call no man his master and likes to think of no man as his servant.
In recent years this egalitarianism has begun to crumble before the pressures generated in post-war Australian society: affluence, competitiveness and the spread of middle-class values have taken their toll. As the middle class has become the dominant social group in Australia so its attitudes and beliefs have begun to replace the old working-class ones.
And yet those who forecast that Australians will lose their habit of equality altogether underestimate the persistence of old ways and old attitudes through times of change. Finally, there is the tradition of equality itself. It is so strongly entrenched in Australia that it will take decades of more intensive social stratification than is now going on to wipe it out altogether. Australians, at home or overseas, feel that they should conform to the national stereotype of the rough, friendly, democratic Australian who has been glorified in a hundred books, poems, yarns and anecdotes. The result can be seen any day of the week in Earls Court, London or once every four years at the Australian Olympic team’s billet: a raucous, shoulder-slapping group of Aussies strenuously acting out the national myth and determinedly proving themselves even more Australian than the Australians back home. Australians take it for granted that they are friendly, gregarious, unsnobbish people, and because they believe it they usually are.