More on Pru Goward

Her essay on the "underclass" has been widely condemned so I thought I might reproduce exactly what she said:

"As a shopkeeper’s daughter, I understood poor people; they obeyed the law, worked hard, sent their kids to the same primary schools I attended and were equally ambitious for their children. But the underclass, small as it then was, behaved differently"

So she was clearly NOT talking about the poor in general, only the dysfunctional segment of the poor. But all commentators that I have seen write as if the had condemned poor people in general, which she carefully said she did NOT do. But the Left chracteristically see only what they want to see so we should not be surprised by the response to Goward

She has not formally replied to her critics but The Guardian records a brief comment from her:

"Goward told Guardian Australia she was “deeply disappointed” that her column had been “so badly misunderstood”. But, she said, opinion pieces are “meant to provoke and I hope it’s helped the readers of the AFR think differently about those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder”.

“I have applied a Marxist analysis which some might say is old fashioned but which explains to me why people judge others as unworthy,” she said.

Goward said Shoebridge was ignoring “all the wonderful things we did for vulnerable children” when she was a minister."

She is perfectly right. Marxists do define everything in terms of class and that is perfectly respectable among sociologists. There is a large literature on the "proletariat" or "underclass" so she is being perfectly routine in referring to that much-studied population segment. Her description was perfectly mainstream sociology. Coming from a Marxist it would pass without notice