ABSTRACT
The Australian community took the shape that it was constructed on the foundations of the social consensus that was forged between the organized working class and their employers. The best way of understanding how the social justice struggles of them became contained within the divisive welfare package, to trace the path of the political philosophies of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the party most committed to social justice ideals. According to accepted wisdom, the philosophy of the ALP can be divided into two distinct phases: a more 'pragmatic phase' from the early 1900s, and a social- democratic, more philosophical phase influenced by the new left in the late 1960s. The struggles of groups marginalized from the terms of the original Harvester Judgement became the social justice struggles of the next phase of ALP politics, in effect locking social justice strategies into the established welfare system.
