Inside the class divide

Updated

Depending on who you ask, class is a major barrier to social mobility — or it scarcely exists. Drive around Melbourne for a day and those conflicting views come to the fore.

Sitting in James's ornate East Melbourne drawing room, you wouldn't know the MCG is literally across the street.

A towering wall shields any view of the passing masses and makes the inner-city home feel profoundly private.

"Fortunately I can avoid seeing that and look at the trees," James says.

James was a barrister and for a time, a state Liberal politician. He's retired now and enjoys playing Real Tennis — an archaic sport championed by typically affluent devotees, who see it as the purest form of the game.

He's warm in person — offering to make me a coffee on my arrival — and talkative.

But when asked how he feels about the concept of social class in Australia, he baulks a little.

"Well, I don't really 'feel' about class in Australia. I suppose it doesn't affect me one way or another, but that might mean I'm lucky," he says.

"I wouldn't have thought there are barriers to social mobility — except to the extent that money is a criteria.

"I don't think it's getting harder for people to make money, if they've got enterprise and bright ideas."

I mention my next stop is in Preston, about 10 kilometres away.

James says he had to go there not too long back: he won a Camry in a raffle and had to pick it up from Toyota's Preston dealership.

'Everyone hates me because I'm poor'

I pass the dealership on the drive to the share house of trans couple Sebastian and Jasmine, who apologise for the smell when I walk in. A sewerage pipe burst out the back and hasn't yet been fixed.

Sebastian is on Centrelink — Jasmine is too — but they think they'll have to sell their car to pay next month's rent.

Class is very much on their minds.

"It's something that I feel very strongly about," says Sebastian, who's 20 years old.

"A lot of the issues I face are because of class."

Sebastian wants a job, but says opportunities for visibly trans people in customer-facing roles are limited.

"Nowhere in retail or fast-food will hire me. Even though I can take out my piercings and cover up my tattoos and pin back my hair, I am still read as a woman. That doesn't really click in people's minds," Sebastian says.

"It's always been hard for me to find a job.

"That plays into the fact I have no money, which is why I'm on Centrelink, which adversely affects my mental health because I have no money to treat it, and being mentally ill means it's difficult to get and hold down a job — therefore no money."

Sebastian recalls vividly experiencing classism while growing up in regional Queensland.

"I used to get bullied a lot because I had the five-dollar shoes from Best & Less, and all the other kids had the expensive leather shoes," Sebastian says.

"I had home-brand snacks in my lunch box. From the age of five, the kids knew that meant 'this person is poor.' As a kid, it was totally wild for me to come to the realisation that the reason everyone hates me is because I'm poor."

'The notion of a fair go is dangerous'

A few suburbs over on the 11th floor of a housing commission in Northcote, Steph, three decades Sebastian's senior, feels much the same way.

She describes herself as "middle-class, without the resources".

A life of stark contrasts has left her with a remarkable perspective on the class divide.

Like Sebastian, Steph has been homeless for stretches of her life. Getting a flat in the over-55s commission block has offered a welcome reprieve.

Her childhood oscillated between private schooling, where girls were driven in Rolls-Royces by chauffers, and hanging around the backblocks of Melbourne's then distinctly working-class West.

She was a gifted violinist, leading the Australian Youth Orchestra in grand concert halls, but stopped pursuing it in her 20s.

"I had an abusive childhood. Being kept up all night practising, getting things right … " she trails off.

"I think that had something to do with it."

We catch the lift to her friend John's place a floor down. She takes care of him from time to time.

John, it turns out, is also a gifted musician — a classical pianist — but an acquired brain injury means he struggles to communicate verbally.

Steph helps him slide in front of a piano squeezed in next to his bed, then picks up her violin.

They play Sonata #8 by Correlli in the bedroom of John's flat and it's a thing of rare beauty.

When the song finishes, Steph, who's had a long career in social work and is currently undertaking a juris doctor in law, mentions she had an interview the other day for a job picking up rubbish at events and festivals.

The interviewer asked if she had any experience in cleaning.

"I'm 57, and I'm a woman, being a carer for someone who's incontinent and caring for children — I've done a lot of cleaning," she says.

She didn't get the job.

"I think the notion of a fair go is bullshit," Steph says.

"I actually think it's a dangerous notion, because it suggests that if you just work hard enough — if you just try hard enough — you're going to do OK. It's a bit like the American Dream.

"We think we have this fair society — and that's not true. What that does is that means people who can't make it, there's something wrong with them.

"It's disheartening to feel like you're bumping up against things all of the time. It wears you out."

'The middle class is far smaller in Botswana'

It's a smoother lift that takes me to the luxe Docklands office of forensic accountant Nasilele.

Sitting in a corporate meeting room booked via a touch-screen on the wall, Nasilele admits to thinking less about class than she did back in Botswana, where the division between rich and poor, upper and lower, is far more pronounced.

"The middle class is far smaller in Botswana," she says.

"The ability to stay within the middle class — that opportunity is a lot wider in Australia."

This year has seen racially-driven tensions against African migrants in Melbourne erupt, but race seems equally far from her mind.

"I'm generally never really in positions where I have to think about my ethnicity," she says.

"Moving here and finding that you're being racially discriminated against could have been your experience and not necessarily my experience.

"I tend to think of myself as Nasilele, accountant, here at work."

She works a highly-skilled job. She mixes with people in her field. That is her experience.

She is, however, extremely cautious not to generalise about class, continually stressing the importance of context and circumstance in someone's chances of moving between social classes.

But asked if she thinks the idea of a 'fair go Australia' still exists, Nasilele is quick to respond.

"Absolutely."

'Once you put on a fluoro uniform, you become practically invisible'

It's now school pick-up time, and Robert is standing out the front of a posh school in the elite suburb of Malvern.

Black Range Rovers and Mercedes four-wheel drives careen past the school crossing he presides over.

A former copy editor and organist, Robert says some friends — "mostly retired academic types" — commiserated with him when he took up the job 18 months back.

"When I first mentioned I was starting work as a school crossing guard, some people couldn't have been more horrified," he says.

"I thought, 'how about the dignity of labour that you're always banging on about?' As far as I'm concerned, a job's a job."

He breaks away mid-thought to help a mother and her two kids cross the road.

Class has had a pronounced effect on Robert's life.

He possesses what, in Anglo-Australian terms, would be considered a high-class accent (that is to say, he sounds English).

Growing up in rural NSW, it exposed him to a strange form of classism.

"If you didn't talk like the late Steve Irwin, you were regarded as a) homosexual, and b) up yourself," he says.

"We were a pretty poor family, and I had much less in terms of money than most of the kids in my class would have done — they were mostly very wealthy farming stock in terms of background.

"But because they talked like Steve Irwin, and I didn't, it was wrongly assumed that I was putting on this hoity-toity accent."

Robert thinks he was even counted out of a job on those grounds, after "dressing too neat and sounding too prim and proper" during the interview.

"I was just being me, however depressing that may be. But I wasn't being insincere," he says.

He references a quote from British politician Iain Macleod in describing himself as "upper-classless".

"That pretty much sums up what I seem to be. It's not a matter of choice, so much as being branded on the tongue, so to speak, with this rather aristocratic accent," he says.

His lips curl to a grin when he considers the irony of how people now perceive him in his current job — or perhaps more correctly, how they don't.

"Once you put on a fluoro uniform, you become practically invisible to many people," he says.

"They just don't perceive that you can hear them. Sometimes they will say something nasty in French and I'll bow and scrape and say 'bonjour Madame!' and they realise to their horror that you know what they're talking about.

"I would say that 99 per cent of people I deal with are friendly, but you do get the occasional person who, as soon as they see you in a fluoro uniform, look straight through you as though you weren't really there."

The last of the school rush peters out and Robert packs up his flags and stop sign.

"I would say that contrary to what most people think, class barriers are much more strict and widely recognised in Australia than they are in England and almost as much as they are in America," he says.

"Most people think we are the most egalitarian society that has ever been, but I certainly haven't found it so.

"I would say class distinctions have actually gotten sharper in my lifetime."

Topics: community-and-society, discrimination, work, government-and-politics, melbourne-3000, australia

First posted