Australia prides itself on fairness and opportunity, yet an unspoken pecking order shapes who advances and who is blamed for falling behind. In schools and public institutions, structural inequality is dressed up as personal failure, with shame doing much of the work.

The pecking order is the unspoken law that governs how power moves through Australia. It is not written in policy or openly debated in parliament, yet it defines who is heard, who is dismissed, and whose lives are allowed to matter. The hierarchy is so familiar it feels natural. But it is constructed, protected and continually reinforced, especially by those who sit comfortably at the top.

That upper tier remains remarkably consistent. It includes ministers, senior bureaucrats, political advisers and the network of private-school professionals who move seamlessly between government, consultancy and corporate boards. Their lives share a predictable beginning: childhoods shaped by emotional stability, financial buffer, and adults who provided structure rather than chaos. These early conditions are not incidental; they forge the developmental foundations for self-control, confidence, long-term planning and the belief that the world will respond positively to one’s efforts.

From these protected origins, many enter elite private schools where confidence becomes not just a trait, but a cultural inheritance. These schools specialise in teaching young people how to speak, present and lead. They cultivate fluency in institutional language, comfort with authority, and the unexamined expectation of upward mobility. Students do not leave carrying arrogance; they leave with the quiet assumption that they belong in influential spaces. Entitlement becomes internalised not as superiority but as normality. This is the first pillar of the pecking order.

The second pillar is the mythology that holds the hierarchy in place: meritocracy. Those at the top genuinely believe they earned their position. They see their success as the predictable reward for talent and hard work, and they interpret the stability of their early lives as their own achievement rather than a gift of circumstance. Their confidence appears to confirm this story. So does their ease with institutional rules, their polished communication, and their ability to navigate bureaucratic and political systems. In their eyes, the world is coherent and fair, and inequality is largely the result of personal failure rather than structural difference.

This is the class blind spot. When life has consistently made sense, it is difficult to imagine a childhood where nothing is reliable, where adults are unpredictable, or where survival rather than planning becomes the organising principle of the brain. The blind spot is not heartlessness but insulation. Yet its consequences are severe.

At the lower end of the pecking order live those whose lives have unfolded under opposite conditions. Children raised in unstable homes or in communities marked by poverty develop a radically different understanding of the world. When danger, scarcity or volatility dominate early experience, the brain adapts by becoming vigilant, reactive and wary. This is a rational response to chaos, not a deficiency of character. But these adaptations sit poorly within systems designed by people who grew up in stability. Children in such communities learn deference because challenging authority carries risk. They limit aspirations because disappointment has been a constant companion. They internalise the message that struggle is personal, not structural.

Every so often, someone from this world rises upward, crossing the invisible boundary that separates the under-class from the elite. Their stories are quickly turned into inspirational parables about grit and determination. But those who climb are often required to shed parts of themselves to survive in elite spaces. They are “duchessed,” rewarded only if they adopt the norms and narratives of the ruling class. Their success must be explained in the language of merit, not circumstance, and this often makes them the most fervent defenders of the system that once excluded them.

The emotional force that binds the pecking order together is shame. Shame turns structural inequality into individual failure. It tells people at the bottom that they struggle because they are inadequate. It teaches communities that their disadvantage reflects moral weakness rather than the cumulative weight of neglect. Entire suburbs and regions absorb narratives of deficiency repeated in political speeches, media commentary and bureaucratic reports. These places come to symbolise failure, and the people who live there internalise that story. Shame becomes intergenerational, transmitted not through genetics but through public judgments and policy design.

The pecking order reveals itself most clearly in the rituals of public institutions. Consider a school preparing for a visit from a senior official. The choreography is precise: certain classrooms are showcased, others quietly avoided; students are selected to perform respectability; teachers rehearse explanations that signal competence; the visitor moves through the school receiving a curated narrative that reassures them about their own leadership. Everyone knows their role. The school performs deference; the official performs authority. The truth of the institution, its struggles, its vulnerabilities is concealed beneath a ritual designed to preserve hierarchy. It is a performance repeated across hospitals, government agencies and community organisations whenever authority arrives. These rituals protect the blind spot and maintain the illusion that the system is functioning.

The cost of this hierarchy is immense. Leaders interpret social problems through the lens of their own developmental stability, misunderstanding the realities of those who live without it. Policies are built on assumptions that do not hold for large parts of the population. Bureaucratic frameworks treat instability as a behavioural failure rather than a predictable outcome of early adversity. When communities inevitably struggle within systems not designed for them, shame is triggered and the hierarchy justifies itself once more. Inequality becomes self-perpetuating, not because people are incapable, but because the system repeatedly confirms their place in the order.

Australia’s pecking order is sustained by two stories that reinforce each other: the privileged believe they earned their success, and the disadvantaged are taught to believe they deserve their hardship. This emotional economy keeps the hierarchy intact. Yet what appears natural is entirely constructed. It is the product of policy choices, cultural narratives and institutional rituals that protect the worldview of the powerful.

A society that refuses to confront its own class structure cannot close the gaps it claims to care about. If we want a more equal nation, we must first dismantle the myths that justify inequality. That means exposing the blind spot, challenging the meritocratic story, and releasing disadvantaged communities from the shame that has been placed upon them. Until then, the pecking order will continue to set the terms of public life, shaping policy, distorting perception and defining who is allowed to thrive. It is time we saw it for what it is: not a natural hierarchy, but a social choice hidden in plain sight.