Is Canberra a Strict Class Stratified or Caste Society?

Truthiness said :

On a global scale, pretty much every Australian is in the top 2%, even on the dole you’re one of the richest people on the planet. Its damn hard to starve in Australia, its possible, but you’d have to be giving it a red hot go. What we think of as poor is not the same thing as poor elsewhere, not even close.

By and large, poor people can’t afford to live in Canberra. The average rent alone in Canberra is twice the dole, let alone all the other costs of living here. We have some artists, pensioners and youths who manage to eek out an existence amongst our excess, but most simply move away to somewhere cheaper.

The only real class divides present here is stratification of the upper class, the divide between those of us who are merely wealthy and those with what is commonly referred to as “f*** off money”. It ends up being the difference between aspiring millionaires and multimillionaires.

The vast majority of humanity would consider us all rich.

It is damn easy to mooch in this city, I must say.

If the average Canberran could take their wage to Thailand, they could definitely afford Thai servants. If the average Thai person brought their wage to Canberra they certainly couldn’t afford Canberran servants.

I am fairly certain there is even a visa class for house servants, mostly used by the embassies. If the average Canberran had a room to keep them in, I’m sure they could afford to have servants shipped in.

Complain all you want about purchasing power, the reality is you have more purchasing power than most towns on earth. If we chose to subsist on rice we could each afford enough to feed hundreds if not thousands of people. The lack if perceived purchasing power is largely because we spend on luxuries.

The average Canberran earns $200+ a day, the average human survives on a hundred times less. We are all rich here.

Truthiness said :

On a global scale, pretty much every Australian is in the top 2%, even on the dole you’re one of the richest people on the planet. Its damn hard to starve in Australia, its possible, but you’d have to be giving it a red hot go. What we think of as poor is not the same thing as poor elsewhere, not even close.

By and large, poor people can’t afford to live in Canberra. The average rent alone in Canberra is twice the dole, let alone all the other costs of living here. We have some artists, pensioners and youths who manage to eek out an existence amongst our excess, but most simply move away to somewhere cheaper.

The only real class divides present here is stratification of the upper class, the divide between those of us who are merely wealthy and those with what is commonly referred to as “f*** off money”. It ends up being the difference between aspiring millionaires and multimillionaires.

The vast majority of humanity would consider us all rich.

SWEET AS BRO !!! I’ll just go by noodles at thailand prices and get myself a thai servant becvause I’m aussie and so rich ! Whats that ? I have to buy things at Australian prices ? What is that ? Purchasing power of the dollar is rubbish. Damnit,

On a global scale, pretty much every Australian is in the top 2%, even on the dole you’re one of the richest people on the planet. Its damn hard to starve in Australia, its possible, but you’d have to be giving it a red hot go. What we think of as poor is not the same thing as poor elsewhere, not even close.

By and large, poor people can’t afford to live in Canberra. The average rent alone in Canberra is twice the dole, let alone all the other costs of living here. We have some artists, pensioners and youths who manage to eek out an existence amongst our excess, but most simply move away to somewhere cheaper.

The only real class divides present here is stratification of the upper class, the divide between those of us who are merely wealthy and those with what is commonly referred to as “f*** off money”. It ends up being the difference between aspiring millionaires and multimillionaires.

The vast majority of humanity would consider us all rich.

MartianMick said :

it is more likely those women will have new boyfriends…

When I was at the University of Melbourne I had someone ask me what school I went to, and when I named a government high school, he thought I was making a joke.

Nevertheless, I think that Canberra is unusual in having one employer dominate so much, so everyone knows exactly where the other person sits in the hierarchy. I remember someone at a party saying ‘Sorry, I don’t have time to talk to you’ when I said I was not in the public service, and turning to speak to someone else (who was mortified). That was a fair while ago.

You can get rude people anywhere, of course.

johnboy said :

Let’s face it tradies have far more money than cubicle dwellers!

yeah almost all of the hot chicks in the PS are dating some tradie.

Hopefully with the fallout from the construction industry their wages fall to 50k a year ! Then all those women can have poor boyfriends !

Duffbowl said :

Do I think Canberra is a more class-stratified society than the rest of Australia?
No, not really. I grew up in a less-than-reputable area in Adelaide, and it still has an impact on some folk from South Aus when I mention it.

Is there a lord and serf mentality?
In Canberra? Absolutely. I think a fair few APS staff take home the “what level are you?” mentality.

+1

I dont think we are any worse than any other state in our ‘us and them’ views. They dont have the added bonus of the APS as another divide but they still get the ‘Oh you are from XXXXX?’ look of contempt.

I’m from Adelaide and from the less salubrious Northern suburbs. People always gave me shit about it and there was a fair amount of eyebrow raising. Funnily when I moved to Sydney and told them I was from the northern suburbs they equated to their north shore ….cracked me up!

In Adelaide (and Melbourne and Sydney) I met a lot of professional people who would consider dating someone from a blue collar background or a lower paying job. Men and women at that!

I’m an ex-Sydneysider and Canberra seems almost classless in comparison. There’s close to 100% middle class and a few poor people.

Perhaps this high homogeneity makes people want to split hairs more? Perhaps it’s like that old chestnut about snow-bound peoples with a bajillion words for snow.

Lets face it a young gogetter EL2 with a Harvard MBA is not going to waste his time talking to an ASO 5 next door when he can suck up to the SES person across the road.

DrKoresh said :

kakosi said :

I still get asked “where do you come from?” on a regular basis.

I can’t comment with the same perspective, because although I’m only first generation on my mother’s side I’m still a whitey and as such don’t face the prejudices that non-anglos do…..

Ummm, I’m pretty white and my family has been in Aust for few generations. But if I ask someone where they are from (unless they have an obvious accent) I am not suggesting anything about their recent immigration status.

For example ( an on topic) I always ask grads (Translation: new APS employees each year in the Graduate Program) where they are from. This isn’t because I am making assumptions based on (our current grads) obvious asian genetics, but because about 90% of grads move to Canberra for the job.

kakosi said :

I still get asked “where do you come from?” on a regular basis.

I can’t comment with the same perspective, because although I’m only first generation on my mother’s side I’m still a whitey and as such don’t face the prejudices that non-anglos do. However, asking where you come doesn’t strike me as out and out racism. It might be insensitive, but I don’t think it’s wrong to be curious about another person’s heritage. I think you can safely assume that most of the time they mean “Where did your family emigrate from then?” when they ask that question and not that they think you just stepped off the boat.

Is it wrong to be curious about other folks’ heritage? 😮

farnarkler said :

I think there is a definite class structure here. From friends experience, a lot of women in the APS won’t date tradesmen and they won’t date a bloke in the APS who’s a lower level than them. Perhaps that’s too much a ‘micro-view’ of Canberra.

funny you should mention that. when i first came to canberra in 05 as a single lad I was shocked that the first question out of most lasses mouth at the pub was “what level are you” considering i didn’t work in the APS it meant i could have some fun. If i didn’t like the girl i’d say APS3 and she would then run away. If I was bored i could go Band 1 (at the age of 30 it would be a fair effort) and see how long it took her to twig.

I rarely answered honestly as i thought the question was bloody obnoxious and was a very slightly veiled way of asking how much money you were on and might you be able to help my career

devils_advocate said :

In summary, anyone who thinks that being X level in the public service somehow bestows upon them some kind of social status, is someone who, by definition, you don’t want in your social circle.

The sad cry for relevance and respect you speak of is not a public service thing alone. I recall several of my friends (who did trades) in their mid twenties being very touchy about “people who don’t do really work” and seeming to wan’t respect ’cause they did four or so years of training at slave wages to get where they were (while refusing to see people who did four years at Uni to get a job as being essentially the same). Most people seem to get past this attitude pretty quickly, and get on with life.

On the “APS chicks who won’t date tradies” comments, this seems to be at odds with my experience. I would say that a disproportionately high number *do* date tradies. Although, considering so of the wanker who work here I understand it.

I sometime am interested in what level someone is (if they are an pubic servant), but that is simply because that is how you tell how a person is doing in their career. If someone tells me they are an EL1 or APS6 I immediately have a pretty good idea of their career progression and what they make. Rank in the defence or police forces or emergency services is the same. Much harder to do with someone in the private sector unless you have a good knowledge of the specific industry in question.

If somene told me they managed a Woolies store for example, it would give me an idea of their career progression – but only a loose idea. I have no idea how easy or hard that job it to get to. I certainly have no idea how much it pays.

/rant

TL:DR – while it might appear people are fixated on “level”, I think it is just pubic servants speaking the language they speak.

devils_advocate said :

The only wankers who focus on an APS-based ‘class structure’ are those who are in that class structure themselves, often with an inflated sense of self-importance or a nagging realisation that what they do is really quite irrelevant outside a very narrowly defined sub-section of society. Probably this is a defence mechanism against the fact that everyone outside that class structure treats their petty ‘hierarchy’ with indifference at best, and contempt at worst (usually middling out somewhere around detached amusement).

In summary, anyone who thinks that being X level in the public service somehow bestows upon them some kind of social status, is someone who, by definition, you don’t want in your social circle.

Couldn’t agree more. Thread over.

The only wankers who focus on an APS-based ‘class structure’ are those who are in that class structure themselves, often with an inflated sense of self-importance or a nagging realisation that what they do is really quite irrelevant outside a very narrowly defined sub-section of society. Probably this is a defence mechanism against the fact that everyone outside that class structure treats their petty ‘hierarchy’ with indifference at best, and contempt at worst (usually middling out somewhere around detached amusement).

In summary, anyone who thinks that being X level in the public service somehow bestows upon them some kind of social status, is someone who, by definition, you don’t want in your social circle.

There is, to a degree. Within the public service there’s a big ‘what level are you’ mentality, probably because it’s so structured.

People here look down on tradies on retail because they often provide actually crap service.

In the professional private sector, most people don’t care any near as much (except in places like large law and accounting firms).

Is it worse than anywhere else? No. And we still have the option of coming fro a poor background and hauling ourselves up by the bootstraps, so to speak. Also, attending a top private school here is no guarantee of success – I know plenty of people who attended high end schools who have done pretty much ntohing since leaving (almost 20 years ago for peoplpe my age).

There may be a lord and serf mentality, but I think both sides of it believe themselves to be lords, which means that our serfs don’t seem to want to do their jobs!

Absolutely, I grew up in one of those fibro “workers” houses in Narrabundah. The more wealthy anglo-Australians lived across a main road in what they called “Narrabundah heights”, Griffith and Red Hill.

To make things worse we were “new Australians” so not only were we looked down upon for being the family of a miner but also for being not quite Australian enough.

Going to private schools and becoming economically middle-class hasn’t helped with the attitude of many people I meet at work and in the community. I still get asked “where do you come from?” on a regular basis.

I think there is a definite class structure here. From friends experience, a lot of women in the APS won’t date tradesmen and they won’t date a bloke in the APS who’s a lower level than them. Perhaps that’s too much a ‘micro-view’ of Canberra.

Hi. No. I am in the public service and I’m an economic refugee from Victoria and I am poor. I think maybe this was once the case as a lot of old public servants are very rich a posh. The young ones are certainly poor and a lot poorer than tradies.

Thanks

You were classified in the late 50’s – 60’s by the hostel you lived in.

Do I think Canberra is a more class-stratified society than the rest of Australia?
No, not really. I grew up in a less-than-reputable area in Adelaide, and it still has an impact on some folk from South Aus when I mention it.

Is there a lord and serf mentality?
In Canberra? Absolutely. I think a fair few APS staff take home the “what level are you?” mentality.

Hardly. There is public housing in Forrest.

Still trying to figure out the rugby league segue.