Social Justice and its position in the Australian society: Any lesson for the Nigerian justice system?

Introduction

One of the topmost priority of every society is to ensure that it advances the overall wellbeing of its citizens regardless of class, status, race, colour, gender or even religion (Zoltan, 2012). In fact, it is in a bid to ensure that the abovementioned is achieved that the need for social contract became paramount, as both the citizens and government reached a political agreement, where the generality of the peoples’ rights and privileges are to be protected by the government, while the citizens in turn respect the sovereignty of the government (Duigman, n.d).

Be it as it may, it is sad to say that in most democracies around the world today, there have been serious cases of social injustice and particularly, social inequality, which have ended up exposing innocent citizens to undue suffering and hardship with little or no efforts by the government to arrest these cases. Based on this background, the thrust of this report is to critically examine the social justice system in Australia and discuss the manner in which the fundamental human rights of the citizens were violated as a result of compelling social inequalities.

Understanding the concept of Social Justice

Khechen (2013) explains that the concept of social justice focuses on fairness and equality, equity, rights and participation for all irrespective of status among other things that may cause hindrance. The author also noted that generally, there is no scholarly consensus on the definition of social justice but rather, the recent understanding of the concept takes its origin from political philosophy with various perspectives from different academic disciplines such as law and jurisprudence, social psychology, human geography, sociology and the likes.

However, what seems to look like a well-embraced perspective of social justice among scholars from various disciplines is the American political philosopher’s (John Rawl) notion that social justice is prevalent in a society of free citizens who hold equal fundamental rights and cooperating within an economic system that accommodates equal distribution of primary social goods – rights, liberties, self-respect, wealth, income and opportunities (Stanford Encycloredia of Philosophy, 2021).

Elaborating more on social justice, John Rawl in his masterpiece entitled “A Theory of Justice” likened social justice with fairness, with its basic subject as the way in which the major social organisations distribute basic rights and citizen’s obligations and determine the division of benefits from social cooperation (Rawls, 1971).

Based on this premise, it is clear that the concept of social justice is very necessary for the development and growth of every society that seek to achieve continuous progress. Furthermore, in a bid to have a better understanding of social justice as well as its effects on both the people and society when tampered, this report adopts the theory of human rights and structural functionalism.

Theorisation of Social Justice – Theory of Human Rights Structural Functionalism

The Theory of Human Rights. This theory explains that every individual has certain basic rights consequent upon the fact that every human being came into the world by the same process and thus have equal status as not only human beings, but also a legitimate citizens of their respective countries (Higgins, 2019). Furthermore, the theory proposes that every citizen has the right to life, right to personal defence and security, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, right to ownership of property, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, and others (Sen, 2005). In short, the theory of human rights advocates fairness, equity, equality, peace and justice for all citizens in a country.

Structural Functionalism. Earlier propounded by the French sociologist – Emile Durkheim, structural functionalism or functionalist theory is a theory that focuses on how every institutions or component of the society function together. Furthermore, the theory is of the opinion that when a part of a social system changed the opinion that when a part of a social system changes as a result of a crisis, other parts are affected and this can only be resolved when all parts adapt to the condition and work together in collaboration. Overall, a society progresses and functions effectively when there is social justice. However, in the case of social inequality, it retrogresses.

An Understanding of Social Inequality in Australia: A Discourse

Unarguably, Australia remains one of the countries and continent in the world where there is unfair, unjust and unequal distribution of income, wealth and goods, and this results in lack of equal social status among people in the country.

Since the 1990s, Australia has experienced a great deal of inequality and unjust social treatment as a result of recession, which brought with it a sharp fall of workers’ income. Again, the country’s inequality mark increased remarkably from the mid-2000s through the infamous global recession (Australian National University, 2023). These tread of events resulted in an enormous increase in wage disparities which has consistently widened till present. For instance, Thomas & Cox (2015) reports that Australians in the top twenty percent of the wealthy class have seventy times the wealth that people in the bottom twenty percent have thus making Australian’s income inequality average above the mark set by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Average (OECDA).

Elaborating further, the authors revealed that the top five percent of families in Australia earned fifteen times higher than the bottom five percent families in 2012. What this means is that the top twenty percent of income earners have an unequal share of the country’s income distribution (Australian Council of Social Service, 2012). In consolidation of the above-mentioned, the Australian Council of Social and University of New South Wales (2018) equally revealed that between 1981 and 2000, 2001 and 2008, income inequality in Australia has steadily risen and those who are most arrested by this ugly incident include: Single parents (36%), the aged over 65 years (39%), the unemployed (77%), people both overseas especially in non-English speaking countries (24%) and people living in rural and remote areas within South Australia, Tasmama or New South Wales (25% in each cases).

In regard to education, there are a myriad of evidences that point to the fact that education inequality is prevalent in Australia and according to Thomas & DeBortoli (2008), the students who experience the highest level of educational inequality in Australia are low income indigenous students, who live or dwell in rural areas. As a result of this, only thirty-five percent of students who live in remote areas complete their secondary school education in Australia and the completion gap between indigenous and non-indigenous students in Australia marks above 40% (Productivity Commission, 2016); (Lamb, Jackson, Waistab & Huo, 2015).

In the tertiary educational level, sixty-percent of students from the highest social and economic background enroll for University degrees unlike twenty-four of students from low socio-economic standing (Lamb et al., 2015). In addition to the discourse on the inequality rate in educational opportunities in Australia, Cobbold (2017) noted that Australia suffers shortage of teachers in the urban and rural schools. In these schools, there are also inequalities in instructional materials that are distributed with fifty percent of the administrators reporting shortage of instructional materials, compared to eight percent of administrators in schools located in capital cities (Sullivan, Perry & McConney, 2014). Thus, this situation caused a great learning and knowledge disparity between the students from both divides.

Sequel to Section thirty-six of Australia’s Human Rights Act (2019) “Every child has the right to have access to primary education; everybody has the right to have access to secondary education; everybody has the right to have access to tertiary education based on his or her ability to further vocational education and training that is accessible to all (Queensland Human Rights Conversion, 2019). Again, the Australia’s Equal Opportunity Act (2010) seeks to protect all Australians from discrimination and unfair treatment on the basis of their race or nationality (Victoria State Government, 2023). But that notwithstanding, the question remains “Is every Australian protected from discrimination and unfair treatment?’

Conclusion

This report critically examined the concept of social justice and how it interplay with the social and political institutions of the Australian society. With the adoption of the theory of human rights and the structural functionalist theory, the report emphasized on the nature of social inequality and injustice in Australia. Describing it as overwhelming, especially as it affect the Australian working population and people who reside in the remote parts of the country, the report reveals that Australia suffers an increase in wage disparity which has continued to drastically affect the progress and prosperity of Australian peoples especially people with disability, amongst others.

Overall, it is obvious that the Australian government had established laws that project the peoples’ rights to equal social, cultural and economic opportunities but unfortunately, it has not been able to effectively implement these basic rights to a greater percentage.

Photo Credit- https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/esg/social-justice/

References

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Australian Council of Social Service and University of New South Wales (2018). Inequality in Australia 2018. https://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/inequality-in-Australia-2018_fAITSHEET.pdf.

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Thomas, J. & Cox, G. (2015, June 21). Inequality on the Rise as Australia’s richest increase wealth and income: report. SBS News. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/inequality-on-the-rise-as-austrilias-richest-increase-wealth-and-income-report/IV727cyrc

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