Australia 2020 Summit Submission ...

Greetings,

As my application to participate in the Australia 2020 Summit was rejected I have sent in a written submission (see below). I wait to see if this will be accepted or rejected as well.


· Ethical responsibility (Noel Pearson “Understanding Ethics” “Ethics & Political Practice” “Ethics Public for the Sector”)

· Responsible & credible government accounting - General Progress Indicator, Index of Social & Economic Welfare “more reliably measure economic progress … distinguishes between worthwhile growth & economic growth” (wikipedia – information, references) GDP calculates Dr Patel crisis economically beneficial! Trial comparative accounting period?

· Government priorities - $10 million rescue Douglas Woods from Iraq, consular assistance & legal funding Corby, “Bali Nine”, consular assistance Australian paedophiles arrested Asia, lobbying & $500,000 flight David Hicks – Australian children & women trapped overseas by domestic violence & systemic & judicial abuse ignored. Australian values? Economically responsible? Equity & social inclusion for children & women? Other situations we don’t talk/hear about?

· “Nothing about us without us” include “experts by experience” in decision-making. Currently “ethical gap” between rhetoric & reality, researchers have vested interest in research, politicians in re-election, “experts by experience” in change so nobody experiences problems they experienced (listen to any “victim”, Tim Costello “Streets of Hope”, Muhammad Yunus “Banker to the Poor”.)

· Misnomer “government funding” v “public funding” language, ownership & outcomes - affect on social research? Who benefits? Bias & influence?

· “Watchdogs” HREOC, Ombudsman, separate from other government departments, more citizen involvement/access; FOI access, “whistleblower” support & assistance = prevention/risk-management. (“Bega Butcher”, DoCs NSW - those with power/“experts” weren’t “whistleblowers”.)

· Micro credit for self-sufficiency/self-determination, Muhammad Yunus “Banker to the Poor”

· Justice, Margaret Cunneen “Sir Ninian Stephen Lecture”

· Economics & Rule of Law “The Economist” March 15th 2008 p83-85

· Sustainability, www.sustainabilityadvantage.com

· Community-based social-marketing for local solutions, www.cbsm.com

· Implement signed international human-rights instruments

· Enable cross-sectoral partnerships community, government, business.

Management - Jim Collins "Good to Great" & "Good to Great and the Social Sectors"


“Recognising our responsibility & opportunity for creating our reality is the only way I see for making the shift from fear to love – from a world of scarcity & greed to one of abundance in which all people are empowered to fulfil their needs in sustainable ways. … we must break through long cultural conditioning on our lack of power, our willingness to accept, & thus co-create, economic & political inequities that disempower people, currency systems that promote these inequities & anything else preventing the full expression of human potential in sustainable ways.”
Margaret Somerville, Australian ethicist, quoting Elisabet Sahtouris in “The Ethical Imagination” Anansi Press 2006 (p 238-239)



“We don’t need new technologies to solve our problems; while new
technologies can make some contributions, for the most part we “just”
need the political will to apply solutions already available. Of course
that’s a big “just.” … modern societies have already found the will to
solve some of our problems, and to achieve partial solutions to others.”

Jared Diamond, “Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive.”
Penguin Books 2005, P 522


“It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure”.

Martin Luther King





Take care .... take heart ..... Merinda