Is Melbourne Fair?

What makes a city fair?  Who controls what is fair and what is not?  Why do we need to have fairness?  Are there different ‘types’ of fairness or equality?  What is it to be fair?

Some definitions I found on the internet were;

• In accordance with the rules or standards
• Being reasonable, honest and empathetic
• Treating people equally without favouritism or discrimination

Okay, so, is Melbourne fair?  When I first read the question, my immediate response was yes.  I am a girl and I have the right to go to school, I have shelter, food and water, I’m allowed to wear whatever I want, I’m allowed to eat whatever I want.  For me, life is pretty fair.  So my answer was yes.  I then thought about the other people.  Melbourne isn’t full of 14 year old girls with a family wealthy enough to support them with necessities and pleasure.

During our visit to the Salvation Army, I discovered there are around 106,000 homeless people in Melbourne.  20,000 are youths.  Is this fair?  Is it fair for so many people to live in fear on where they will sleep tomorrow?  Only because they either couldn’t make enough money to support themselves or they lived in a physically or emotionally dangerous environment?  Is the government funding enough money for these people?  Do they even care?

Whilst our tour with the Salvation Army, we were told a story of a homeless man.  He was sleeping in an old bus stop.  Every night, the road cleaners will clean that area, it would burst out water into the stop and would completely ignore that man.  One day he noticed he had a a scab on his leg.  Not having any access to medical necessities that scab became worse and infected day after day.  Suddenly one morning he woke up with horrible pains on that leg.  He went to the hospital and ended up with having to amputate half of his right leg.  He was now a disabled homeless man.  Only because of that, did the government pay money for a government house for him in those next 2 weeks, had a home.  He would have had to wait 6-12 months for a house if he wasn’t disabled.  Is that fair?

However, Melbourne is very multi-cultural.  There are people from all over the world who bring different cultures and religions to Australia.  They are still treated exactly the same way and their rights are not affected because they aren’t Australian.  They are allowed to practice their own religion and we all have freedom of speech.  This is all very fair.

In conclusion, I find Melbourne to be fair because we are all treated very equally.  There may be some slight imperfections, however I think that just highlights the importance of fairness.  Without inequality, how would we know what is equality?

Links:

http://www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au/Housing+&+Accommodation/Homelessness/#.UZHbjbtZ_b8

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness