Top of the class and looking down on the nation

Eric Lobbecke

IT is a sobering fact that if you stopped 10 people in the street in Fitzroy North, one of them would probably have a degree in society and culture. Not every graduate in gender studies, post-nationalism or trans-border cultural hegemony votes Green, of course, but they tend to live in suburbs where a lot of people do.

According to the latest census, almost 2500 residents in Fitzroy North, in the Greens-held seat of Melbourne, studied humanities or creative arts after leaving school. That is handy if you want to nip next door to borrow a copy of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but it is a bugger if you need a tap washer changed on a weekend; only 7 per cent of the suburb's labour force works in a trade.

On the other side of Flemington Racecourse, in the neighbouring federal seat of Maribyrnong, they are a much more practical lot. There are more than 7000 trade workers, and thousands more machine operators, drivers and labourers, but if you're looking to hire a sociologist in Moonee Ponds, you can forget it. Four out of five of Bill Shorten's constituents do not have a degree of any kind and almost half did not finish Year 12.

Until 2010, both seats had returned Labor MPs for as long as anyone could remember. In a two-cornered fight between the ALP and Coalition, it would have been hard to tell their voting patterns apart. With the rise of the Greens, however, the distinctions are clear. In gentrified Melbourne, 36 per cent put the Greens first at the last election; in Maribyrnong the Greens' primary support was just 12 per cent, close to the state average.

A deep cultural fault-line divides the two constituencies, and if Labor is to win the next election, it must find a way to straddle it. It is clear where the Greens' support base lives; the party does best in electorates where university degrees are common and weakest in places where they are not.

In Anthony Albanese's inner-city Sydney seat of Grayndler, where 36 per cent have degrees, 24 per cent cast their first preference for the Greens in 2010, twice the national average. In Greenway, in Sydney's northwestern suburbs, where only 22 per cent of the electorate are graduates, less than 10 per cent of voters cast their first preference for the Greens.

This iron rule of modern politics holds true across the country regardless of which party actually wins the seat. Bradfield on Sydney's north shore, where more than 40 per cent of adults have been to university, is rock-solid Liberal territory. Nevertheless, the Greens collected 16 per cent of the primary vote, well above the national average.

The traditional conception of a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is entirely irrelevant in modern Australia; education is at the heart of the new class divide.

There are two classes, to be sure, and the divide is growing wider, but in common with every other educated Western society, it is not financial wealth that defines class these days but cultural wealth. The coffee shops of Fitzroy North are not the preserve of the upper or lower class but new class, the educated middle class, which has been growing steadily since the early 1960s.

In 1966, when the Australian Bureau of Statistics started asking questions about academic credentials in the census, there were fewer than 90,000 graduates in the workforce. Today there are more than 66,000 in the seat of Melbourne alone, and one does not have to revert to stereotypes to recognise that these people are a class apart. Most would be comfortable at being described as socially progressive. Barely half of Adam Bandt's constituents claim any religious attachment; 49 per cent either did not state one or ticked the "no religion" box in the census. In Maribyrnong, 78 per cent claimed religious affiliation. In Grayndler 39 per cent were irreligious; in Greenway less than 17 per cent rejected religious ties.

In every way, outer suburbs frequented by non-graduates appear more socially conservative than those closer to the city. In Maribyrnong, four men in 10 are married; in the seat of Melbourne only three in 10 are, but inner-city men are four times more likely to be living in de facto relationships than men in the outer suburban seat.

It is much the same picture in Sydney: in Grayndler, 42 per cent of men are married and 14 per cent are in de facto relationships; in Greenway 56 per cent are married and only 2.4 per cent live in a non-married partnership.

By any measure the new class is a minority, yet it speaks with a powerful voice and wields considerable influence. In the US, some commentators are confidently calling the new class the ruling class, a judgment reinforced by the re-election of President Barack Obama, a new-class politician if ever there was one. With Tony Abbott favourite to win September's election, the new class's ascendancy as rulers is likely to be delayed for a while, but it is not for want of ambition.

They may not yet be the boss class, but they are certainly the bossy class, chiefs rather than the Indians. In the seat of Melbourne, well over half the workforce are classified as managers or professionals; in Maribyrnong less than a third fall into that category. Melbourne electors are unlikely to return home from work with dirt between the fingernails; only 13 per cent work in trade or manual occupations; in Maribyrnong the figure is 30 per cent.

The new class are not short of a bob or two; a quick survey of the cars parked outside the renovated Victorian terraces of Fitzroy North tells you that. Crucially, however, it is it not their wealth that defines them. In Sydney, however, the socially conservative, less academically credentialled people of Greenway are marginally better off than those in inner-city Grayndler; household income is $1593 a week compared with $1580.

Their money, however, buys them neither respect nor influence with the new class, among whom Greenway folk would be disparagingly called "aspirational voters". Aspiration, the spirit Australia once encouraged, is now considered poor form. In Greenway 55 per cent of households have more than one car and 16 per cent have three or more. In the green-friendly suburbs that make up Grayndler, half the households get by with just one car and 21 per cent manage with none at all.

In politics as it was once practised in Australia this would have mattered very little, but in today's supercharged arena of identity politics, these lifestyle differences are the clues to navigating the landscape of politics.