I grew up between two worlds: the boardroom and the leaking roof.

When I was little, my father went to work every morning holding my hand.

He wore a suit and tie, but I thought nothing of it. I was told he was a “security guard”.

He would stand at the factory gates and shake hands with every single worker coming in, regardless of heat or rain.

To me, that was his job.

When I was 11, my Chinese teacher came to our home and asked my father to help her brother get a job.

I burst out laughing — surely she had mistaken him for someone important. My father had no privilege, I thought.

The next day before class, she asked me again, “So, what does your father do?”

Confidently, I said, “A guard.”

She rolled her eyes. “Liar.”

I cried. I ran home to my mother, a housewife whose daily job was deciding what I should eat from breakfast to dinner.

I asked her, “Mama, why would my teacher say I am a liar?”

She held me and said softly, “Sorry, she was right. Your father is not a guard. He owns the company.”

It was a revelation. In that moment, the world tilted — part betrayal, part nurture.

Betrayal, because I suddenly realised my parents had hidden something so central.

Nurture, because in their way, they were teaching me not to grow up blinded by privilege.

A few years before I came to Australia, my family went through the worst kind of poverty.

My mother was seriously ill, and my father was forced to stay away for two years.

The house we moved to — our supposed safe harbour, lent by my aunty — leaked so badly in the summer that on an ordinary rainy day I would practise violin while standing beside twenty basins catching rainwater.

Life was like a rollercoaster, and I have carried my mother’s lesson with me ever since.

So what is class, really? Is it defined by wealth? Education? Status? For me, it’s none of these. Classiness is the awareness of privilege.

I see “class” not in money or titles, but in whether someone recognises the privilege they carry — and whether that awareness shapes how they treat others.

You can choose to be well-dressed yet self-centred and rude — that is what I call the lower class.

Or you can live at the poverty line and still speak up for those even more vulnerable — that, to me, is the upper class.

As for me, I still live between those two worlds. And that in itself became a advantage, because it allows me to use empathy — to understand people from both sides.

As a journalist for a national broadcaster, my privilege is obvious. Yet it has not been untouched by hardship. And I hope I will always demand of myself enough awareness to hold it lightly.

This is what I pay attention to. And this is why I can be trusted when a story breaks.

We need to understand not only those who fail to hold privilege responsibly, but also those who, though deprived of privilege, still live with integrity.