The Egalitarian Principle

1106: 

In Australia there’s fertile ground for egalitarianism.  Ever since the beginning of Western occupation (our treatment of indigenous people notwithstanding) there’s been a strong unifying thread amongst new arrivals to this country.  As émigrés and refugees, often from harsh regimes, most of us or our forebears have pulled together to develop a national identity that is, at heart, egalitarian.  We’ve developed attitudes of giving one another a ‘fair go’, of tolerating minorities and of accepting new attitudes.

But across the species barrier, can there be any sort of equality?

In Australia we’re in a prime position to show the rest of the world how it can be done, amongst people of different cultural backgrounds.  It isn’t just a matter of tolerating differences, but actually appreciating those differences, to the extent of developing a humanitarianism based on respect for each other.  We’ve been able to drop the class system, and to a large extent we’ve dumped the intellectual stratification in our society.  That might place us in a good position to extend that same ‘fair-go’  principle to animals, for why would we arbitrarily exclude other sentient species from an equality that we advocate amongst ourselves?  It is, after all, based on a principle of showing goodwill towards the disadvantaged and standing up for the oppressed.