“Privilege … is about the exclusive benefits flowing from status, power and embedded social capital,” says academic Myra Hamilton.
By Marina Williams
In the winter of 2021, Sydney’s Covid-19 lockdown laid bare a stark divide.
Families in disadvantaged suburbs managed home schooling while holding low-paid essential jobs, yet students at elite schools were granted exemptions for ski camps and outdoor education.
At the same time, wealthy travellers bypassed quarantine on private jets while thousands of Australians remained stranded overseas.
For Associate Professor Myra Hamilton, these contrasts crystallised a longstanding research interest: how privilege grants opportunity denied to others.
“These incidents shattered the early pandemic sentiment of unity and exposed a troubling divide,” Myra says.
“Privilege appeared to grant access to freedoms denied to others.”
A sociologist at the University of Sydney Business School, Myra had long examined inequality.
The pandemic prompted her and her father, Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, to investigate how elite privilege operates in Australia.
“We set out to explore the mechanisms behind these unequal benefits and their broader social consequences,” Marina says.
Their findings became ‘The Privileged Few’, published in May last year.
They define “the privileged few” as individuals with disproportionate access to resources, influence and opportunities across business, politics, media, academia and culture.
“While wealth plays a significant role, elite status is also shaped by social connections, cultural familiarity and symbolic markers of prestige, such as exclusive memberships, elite schooling, and public honours,” says Myra, who spoke at the Justice and International Mission cluster’s annual conference in July.
“Privilege, in this context, is less about money than about the exclusive benefits flowing from status, power and embedded social capital.”
Elite privilege, she explains, is the social practice of conferring advantage on the wealthy and influential.
“These practices reproduce and legitimise the privileges enjoyed by elites,” Marina says.
“They don’t appear magically because someone has money – privileges are granted or bestowed by others every day.”
Myra says confronting elite privilege is about fairness and the health of society.
These advantages rest on three interconnected forms of capital: financial, social and cultural.
“These forms of capital can be converted into each other to enhance wealth, status and influence,” Myra says.
The operations of elite networks are often invisible to outsiders but normalised within elite circles.
As revealed in the book, Freedom of Information requests show how billionaire Kerry Stokes secured exemptions from strict Western Australian pandemic quarantine rules, engaging senior government.
More everyday examples occur in workplaces.
Research participant, Holly, said her shared elite school background with a senior partner led to mentoring: “Work became a little bit easier, just to have a role model who took time with me”.
The book also recounts the story of Justin Stevens, ABC Director of News, who in a 2022 interview described how his elite connections helped him secure an early career break at the Nine Network.
This was not advertised or competitive but made possible entirely through personal and family networks.
Elite private schools, Myra says, cultivate exclusivity and instil in students the belief they are exceptional.
She describes them as engines of the cycle of privilege, where parental wealth is converted into social and cultural resources that students use to access opportunities unavailable to others.
Myra notes that elite privilege intersects with other inequalities.
“It’s much easier to talk about male or white privilege,” she says.
“Elite privilege is neglected, yet it cuts across race, gender and class in ways that make it harder to challenge.”
Policy change, Myra argues, is essential to addressing inequality.
“Increasing taxation of the rich is the clearest lever for addressing inequality, while reintroducing inheritance taxes would help,” she says.
She also highlights the resource gap between public and elite private schools, noting that tax deductibility for donations to elite schools effectively amounts to public subsidies for privilege.
Cultural change is equally important.
“We have a well-developed language for calling out gender and racial inequality, but we lack a shared language for calling out inequalities based on class or educational background,” Myra says.
“Without it, the unconscious preferment of candidates with the right connections or ‘cultural fit’ goes unchallenged.”
For those who see success as purely a matter of merit and effort, Myra offers a challenge.
“Merit can’t be separated from the structural advantages that shape life chances,” she says.
“The pathways to success are smoother for those with elite schooling, influential networks and cultural capital – advantages that are neither earned nor equally available.
“Recognising this is the first step toward building fairer systems.”
Confronting elite privilege is not just about fairness, Myra says, but rather about the health of society.
“Elite privilege is not a by-product of wealth but an organising principle for society,” she says.
“Unless we address how it is sustained, legitimised and reproduced, we can’t hope to create a more equal Australia.”
