The ethics of drug injecting rooms
Should we allow people to use illicit drugs if it means that we can reduce the harm they cause? Or is doing so just promoting bad behaviour?
Illicit drug use costs the Australian economy billions of dollars each year, not to mention the associated social and health costs that it imposes on individuals and communities. For the last several decades, the policy focus has been on reducing illicit drug use, including making it illegal to possess and consume many drugs.
Yet Australia’s response to illicit drug use is becoming increasingly aligned with the approach called ‘harm reduction,’ which includes initiatives like supervised injecting rooms and drug checking services, like pill testing.
Harm reduction initiatives effectively suspend the illegality of drug possession in certain spaces to prioritise the safety and wellbeing of people who use drugs. Supervised injecting rooms allow people to bring in their illicit drugs, acquire clean injecting equipment and receive guidance from medical professionals. Similarly, pill testing creates a space for festival-goers to learn about the contents and potency of their drugs, tacitly accepting that they will be consumed.
Harm reduction is best understood in contrast with an abstinence-based approach, which has the goal of ceasing drug use altogether. Harm reduction does not enforce abstinence, instead focusing on reducing the adverse events that can result from unsafe drug use such as overdose, death and disease.
Yet there is a great deal of debate around the ethics of harm reduction, with some people seeing it as being the obvious way to minimise the impact of drug use and to help addicts battle dependence, while those who favour abstinence often consider it to be unethical in principle.
Much of the debate is muddied by the fact that those who embrace one ethical perspective often fail to understand the issue from the other perspective, resulting in both sides talking past each other. In order for us to make an informed and ethical choice about harm reduction, it’s important to understand both perspectives.
The ethics of drug use
Deontology and consequentialism are two moral theories that inform the various views around drug use. Deontology focuses on what kinds of acts are right or wrong, judging them according to moral norms or whether they accord with things like duties and human rights.
Immanuel Kant famously argued that we should only act in ways that we would wish to become universal laws. Accordingly, if you think it’s okay to take drugs in one context, then you’re effectively endorsing drug use for everyone. So a deontologist might argue that people should not be allowed to use illicit drugs in supervised injecting rooms, because we would not want to allow drug use in all spaces.
An abstinence-based approach embodies this reasoning in its focus on stopping illicit drug use through treatment and incarceration. It can also explain the concern that condoning drug use in certain spaces sends a bad message to the wider community, as argued by John Barilaro in the Sydney Morning Herald:
“…it’d be your taxpayer dollars spent funding a pill-testing regime designed to give your loved ones and their friends the green light to take an illicit substance at a music festival, but not anywhere else. If we’re to tackle the scourge of drugs in our regional towns and cities, we need one consistent message.”
However, deontology can also be inflexible when it comes to dealing with different circumstances or contexts. Abstinence-based approaches can apply the same norms to long-term drug uses as it does to teenagers who have not yet engaged in illicit drug use. With still high rates of morbidity and mortality for the former group, some may prefer an alternative approach that highlights this context and these consequences in its moral reasoning.
Harms and benefits
Enter consequentialism, which judges good and bad in terms of the outcomes of our actions. Harm reduction is strongly informed by consequentialism in asserting that the safety and wellbeing of people who use drugs are of primary concern. Whether drug use should be allowed in a particular space is answered by whether things like death, overdose and disease are expected to increase or decrease as a result. This is why scientific evaluations play an important role in harm reduction advocacy. As Stephen Bright argued in The Conversation:
“…safe injecting facilities around the world: ’have been found to reduce the number of fatal and non-fatal drug overdoses and the spread of blood borne viral infections (including HIV and hepatitis B and C) both among people who inject drugs and in the wider community.’”
This approach also considers other potential societal harms, such as public injections and improper disposal of needles, as well as burden on the health system, crime and satisfaction in the surrounding community.
This focus on consequences can also lead to the moral endorsement of some counter-intuitive initiatives. Because a consequentialist perspective will look at a wide range of the outcomes associated with a program, including the cost and harms caused by criminalisation, such as policing and incarceration, it can also conclude that some dangerous drugs should be decriminalised or legalised, if doing so would reduce their overall harm.
While a useful way to begin thinking about Australia’s approach to drug use, there is of course nuance worth noting. A deontological abstinence-based approach assumes that establishing a drug-free society is even possible, which is highly contested by harm reduction advocates. Disagreement on this possibility seems to reflect intuitive beliefs about people and about drugs. This is perhaps part of why discussions surrounding harm reduction initiatives often become so polarised. Nevertheless, these two moral theories can help us begin to understand how people view quite different dimensions of drug treatment and policy as ethically important.
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BY Zach Wilkinson
Zach is currently in the public health field researching and writing on illicit drugs against a backdrop of academic philosophy, psychology and the broader health sciences by way of USYD and UNSW.
License to misbehave: The ethics of virtual gaming
Gaming was once just Pacman chasing pixelated ghosts through a digital darkness but, now, as we tumble headlong into virtual realities, ethical voids are being filled by the same ghosts humanity created IRL.
As a kid I sank an embarrassing amount of time into World of Warcraft online, my elven ranger was named Vereesa Windrunner and rode a silver covenant hippogryph. (Tl;dr: I was a cool chick with a bow and arrow and a flying horse.)
Once I came across two other players and we chatted – then they attacked, took all my things and left me for dead. I was mad because walking back to the nearest town without my trusty hippogryph would take a good half hour.
Gamers call this behaviour “griefing”; using the game in unintended ways to destroy or steal things another player values – even when that is not the objective. It’s pointless, it’s petty, in other words it’s being a huge jerk online.
The only way to cope with that big old dose of griefing was rolling back from my screen, turning off the console and making a cup of tea.
But gaming is changing and virtual reality means logging off won’t be so simple – as exciting and daunting as that sounds.
500 years ago, or whenever Pacman was invented, gaming largely amounted to you being a little dot moving around the screen, eating slightly smaller dots, and avoiding slightly larger dots.
Game developers have endlessly fought to create more realistic, more immersive, and more genuine experiences ever since.
Gaming now stands as its own art, even inspiring seriously good television (try not to cry watching Last of Us) – and the long awaited leap into convincing, powerful VR (virtual reality) is now upon us.
But in gaming’s few short decades we have already begun to realise the ethical dilemmas that come with a digital avatar – and the new griefing is downright criminal.
Last year’s Dispatches investigation found virtual spaces were already rife with hate speech, sexual harassment, paedophilia, and avatars simulating sex in spaces accessible to children.
In the Metaverse also – which Mark Zuckerberg hopes we will all inhabit – people allege they were groped and abused, sexually harrassed and assaulted.
In one shocking experience a woman even claimed she was “virtually gang raped” while in the Metaverse.
So how can we better prepare for the ethical problems we are going to encounter as more people enter this brave new world of VR gaming? How will the lines between fantasy and reality blur when we find ourselves truly positioned in a game? What does “griefing” become in a world where our online avatars and real lives overlap? And why should we trust the creepy tech billionaires who are crafting this world with our safety and security?
The Ethics Centre’s Senior Philosopher and avid gamer Dr Tim Dean spent his formative years playing (and being griefed) in the game, Ultima Online – so he’s just the right person to ask.
Let the games begin
VR still requires cumbersome headsets. The most well known, which was bought by Facebook, is called Oculus but there are others.
Once you’re strapped in, you can turn your head left and right and you see the expansive computer generated landscape stretching out before you.
Your hands are the fiery gauntlets of a wizard, your feet their armoured boots, you might have more rippling abs than you’re used to – but you get the point, you’re seeing what your character sees.
The space between yourself and your avatar quickly closes.
Tim says, there is that kind of “verisimilitude” which feels like you’re right there – for better or for worse.
“If you have a greater sense of identity with your avatar, it magnifies the feelings of violation,” he said.
Videogames were once an escape from reality, a way to unshackle to the point you can steal a car, rob a bank and even kill, but Dean suggests this escapism creates new moral quandaries once we become our characters.
“A fantasy can give you an opportunity to get some satisfaction where you might not otherwise have,” he said.
“But also, if your desires are unhealthy – if you want to be violent, if you want to take things from people, if you enjoy experiencing other people’s suffering – then a fantasy can also allow you to play that out.”
Make your own rules
Dean has hope, despite the grim headlines, saying “norms emerge” in these virtual moral voids and norms begin to form between users – or as they used to be called; “people”.
“Where there are no explicit top down norms that prevent people from harming or griefing other people, sometimes bottom up community norms emerge,” he said.
Dean’s PhD is about the birth of norms: the path from a lawless, warring chaos to self-regulating society because humans learned about the impacts they were having on one another.
It sounds promising, but when Metaverse headsets begin at $1500 you’ll quickly realise the gates to the future open only to the privileged, often wealthy white men become the early adopters.
Mark Zuckerberg seems to have the same concerns.
Metaverse proposed a solution in the form of a virtual “personal bubble” to protect people from groping… but aside from feeling very lame to walk around in a big safety bubble, it demonstrates that there’s no attempt to curb the bad behaviour in the first place.
The solution, in the real world, to combat abuse has typically come in the form of including people from diverse backgrounds, more women, more people of colour, all sharing in the power structure.
For virtual reality – now is the time to have that discussion, not after everyone has a horror story.
Dean thinks there are a few big questions yet to be answered:
Will people, en masse, act horribly in the virtual world?
How do you change behaviour in that world without imposing oppressive rules or… bubbles? Who gets to decide what those rules are? Would we be happy with the rules Meta comes up with? At least in a democracy, we have some power to choose who makes up the rules. That’s not the case with most technology companies.
And how does behaviour in the virtual world translate to our behaviour outside of the virtual world?
Early geeks hoped the internet would be a virtual town square with people sharing ideas – a vision that missed racist chatbots, revenge porn and swatting.
Dean hopes the VR landscape might offer a clean slate, a chance at least to learn from the past and increase people’s capacity for empathy.
“We can literally put on goggles and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” he said.
So maybe there’s hope yet.
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BY Kara Jensen-Mackinnon
Kara Jensen-Mackinnon is an award winning creative producer and journalist, she currently works at the 7am podcast, and has created podcasts for The Guardian, ABC RN, The Sydney Opera House, The Sydney Festival and the UN World Food Program.
The new normal: The ethical equivalence of cisgender and transgender identities
We’ve witnessed some pretty shocking hostility, anger, and violence directed towards the trans community recently, from anti-transgender rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s national speaking tour, to an attack on LGBTQIA+ peaceful protestors by far-right Christian men.
This hostility isn’t new. Recall the former Warringah candidate Katherine Deves derogatorily described Trans and Gender Diverse (TGD) people as “surgically mutilated and sterilised”. Or that gender dysphoria was described as a “social contagion” at a Gender Identity in Law forum at Hobart’s Town Hall, and there was lament that “women and girls would miss out on opportunities to reach elite levels” in professional sport.
It is no secret that transgender women, in particular, are at the forefront of the public discourse around trans rights, and worldwide the slogan “trans women are women” has been catching on. But there is still resistance when certain collectives retort that “women” just are “adult human females”.
What drives these clashes is divergence over the metaphysics of sex and gender: what is ‘sex’, really? What is ‘gender’, really? The way we answer these questions shapes our estimation of which people can belong to which group, how people can behave, and in what ways society should recognise our identities.
Some people think the relationship from sex to gender is straightforward: male sex = man, female sex = woman. But others think that their relationship is more complicated and unpredictable. People might be assigned female at birth but develop a transmasculine gender identity. That person is transgender, and many believe it is both polite and metaphysically accurate to identify these people as men. Likewise, a person assigned male at birth could develop a transfeminine gender identity, and it is appropriate to identify her as a woman.
If this is what you think about sex and gender, then you believe that gender does not reduce to sex. Your view of gender is ‘trans inclusive’.
Enter ‘cisgender’
To help us better articulate the gendered positions that are available to us, in the 1990s trans activists coined the term ‘cisgender’, or ‘cis’ for short referring to people whose gender identity and expression matches the biological sex they were assigned when they were born. Although ‘cisgender’ has been around a long time, it only went ‘mainstream’ pretty recently, being added to the Oxford English Dictionary only in 2015.
I’ve come to believe that cisgender is an ethically necessary concept. And, speaking personally, it is a concept that also allows me to better understand myself and how we can be more inclusive of others.
As B. Aultman explains, “The terms man and woman, left unmarked, tend to normalise cisness — reinforcing the unstated ‘naturalness’ of being cisgender. Using the identifications of ‘cis man’ or ‘cis woman’, alongside the usage of ‘transman’ and ‘transwoman’, resists that norm reproduction and the marginalisation of trans people that such norms effect.”
Putting the point another way, being non-trans is a common, not normal self-expression. Simultaneously, being trans is an uncommon, but nonetheless normal expression. Introducing a positive marker of nontrans identity through the term ‘cisgender’ can have a really important social impact: it can help to destigmatise being trans.
For this reason, ‘cis’ is not just a label for me; it’s meaningful. It allows me to make sense of myself, my experiences, and my social surrounds in a deeply existential way.
Embodied identity
I was raised on a diet of feminist materialism, or ‘difference feminism’, so how I see my self — my own being — is thoroughly embodied; the self is, first and foremost, fundamentally corporeal. But there is no simple line from embodied experience to social identity. All identities are socially constructed to an extent; we don’t decide who we are on our own but do so in response to how other people perceive and interact with us within a rich and layered social environment. And all subjectivity has its basis in the flesh, by virtue of us being embodied creatures.
I believe it is perfectly plausible to acknowledge that different women have different bodies (whether assigned female at birth or not), and so will have qualitatively distinct experiences of being women.
Let me offer some examples, I have always been acutely aware that, because I look the way that I do, because I (appear to) have a certain body, I am treated differently to cisgender men. When I was growing up, people would sexually objectify me. This is something that I share with some, but not all cisgender women, and some, but not all transgender women. I have been harassed because I am a cisgender woman, and a trans woman is harassed because she is a trans woman. Our stories may have similarities, but they will also have distinctiveness.
Today, I spend most of my time dealing with sex-specific chronic pain and the associated medical sexism that goes with the territory. Since this type of pain (endometriosis and adenomyosis) is registered as “women’s pain” in our collective consciousness, the recognition that I am a cisgender woman is significant. It’s easy to comprehend that a transgender man would have a qualitatively distinct experience when he seeks healthcare for his endometriosis.
It is imperative to acknowledge that there are certainly some structural privileges shared by both cis men and women. Acknowledging that we are cis is the first step in owning that privilege. However, the fact remains that cis women stand in a relation of oppression and privilege in relation to cis men, which is to say that, like trans women, cis women are oppressed because of their sex-gender configuration too, whereas cis men are not.
Talking about myself as a ‘cis woman’, thinking of myself as a ‘cis woman’, keeps this rich complexity front and centre as I navigate my day-to-day life.
Owning our gender
So what are the implications of this? Must we always use a prefix (‘cis’ or ‘trans’)? Do we need to make structural or institutional changes? And should all non-trans people recognise themselves as ‘cisgender’?
We don’t always need a prefix. Say you want to compare the average earnings of women to the average earnings of men. In this instance, there is no need to distinguish between trans women and men, and cis women and men. Or, say you want to tally the members of a political party by gender; again, there is no reason to distinguish the trans members from the cis members. Whether we need a prefix is context-dependent.
Let’s say you’re filling out an admission form for an in-patient stay in hospital. Hospitals are the sorts of places where both your sex and gender identity need to be foregrounded. That form could say, “What is your gender: Man; Woman; Other” and “What was your sex-assignment at birth: Male; Female; Other”. But that form could also say: “What is your gender identity: cisgender man; cisgender woman; trans man; trans woman; other”. It doesn’t really matter, so long as the hospital can obtain the information it needs.
But do you have to identify as cis? In my experience, taking up the label in a self-recognitive way helps to decentre the view that trans people are somehow abnormal. I think that’s a good reason, especially in light of the stigma and violence confronting trans people today. I have found value in it – it helps me to understand my own struggles and reminds me not to universalise my experiences.
This article is part of our Why identity matters series.
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BY Louise Richardson-Self
Louise Richardson-Self is a Lecturer in Philosophy and Gender Studies at the University of Tasmania and an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Awardee (2019). Her current research focuses are the problem online hate speech, and the tension between LGBT+ non-discrimination and religious freedom. She is the author of Justifying Same-Sex Marriage: A Philosophical Investigation (2015) and her second book, Hate Speech Against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures is due for publication in 2021.
Who are you? Why identity matters to ethics
A cornerstone of ethics is our fundamental human need to be recognised for who we are and who we want to be.
When I was on the cusp of my teenage years, I discovered who I was. At least, I thought I did. For a middle-class white kid growing up on the north shore of Sydney in the late 1980s, I was surrounded by a homogeneous sameness to which I only belonged by default.
I didn’t feel any strong connection to the dominant Anglo-Australian culture: I didn’t go to church; I didn’t participate in that other religion, sport; and I only begrudgingly watched Hey Hey It’s Saturday. There was nothing there that spoke to my desire to have some grounding that could tell me who I was, what made me different.
And then I saw it, a documentary series produced by the BBC on the Celtic peoples. Despite my rather trivial genealogical association with the Celts – my ancestors originated from across the British Isles – I entirely lacked any cultural connection. Yet I had an overwhelming sense that these were ‘my people,’ and that I could connect myself to their history and culture, and share in their pride and tragedy.
I hastily bought a Celtic cross pendant. I read folk tales of Lugh of the Long Arm and the Tuatha Dé Danann. And, most pretentiously, I started correcting people about my ethnicity, identifying not as Australian or Anglo, but as a proud Celt. I was insufferable.
But this connection to a people and a culture stirred something within me. It satisfied a deep need to belong to something larger than myself, yet it was also something that set me apart from those around me. It gave me an identity.
A few years later, when I was on the cusp of adulthood, I lost that Celtic cross in a field somewhere in Byron Bay, and the cringe that I felt about replacing it forced me to revisit my appropriated identity and ask whether this was really me. It prompted me to reflect on who I was and who I wanted to be, and sparked a journey to build a new identity – a journey that is ongoing.
Identity crisis
Herein lies one of the great challenges of the modern world. Unlike our ancestors, who knew exactly who they were by virtue of the communities they were born (and died) in, the postmodern condition is that our identity is not handed to us: it’s left for us to discover – or to create.
This is both liberating and a curse. It’s liberating because our ancestors had little power to challenge their identity, especially if it ran against the current of their cultural norms. Their free ticket to belong came with no refunds.
The postmodern condition is a curse because we’re effectively dropped into the most diverse, fragmented and generally anxiety-inducing cultural morass in the long history of our species, and left to figure out how to piece together an identity without even a pamphlet to instruct us on how to do so.
Adding to the challenge is the existence of countless religions, corporations, sub-cultures, grifters, conspiracy theorists and self-help book authors who are only too eager to recruit you into their ranks, whether it’s to your benefit or not.
Yet build an identity we must. We are perhaps unique among the animals for having a reflective sense of who we are. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves, and these stories recursively influence who we are. Despite thinkers from the Buddha to David Hume arguing – quite persuasively, in my opinion – that there is no stable ‘self’ at the core of our identity, it’s almost impossible to live without some narrative that explains who we are and directs us towards who we want to be.
The ethics of recognition
Our identity doesn’t just play a descriptive role, explaining who we are, it plays a normative role too. It’s the seat of our dignity, the home of our values and defines what, and who, we stand for.
This is why identity is of central importance to ethics. Indeed, some thinkers, such as Georg Hegel, and Francis Fukuyama after him, have argued that a key feature of ethics is a fundamental desire for recognition. Both draw on the Ancient Greek concept of thymos, a term borrowed from Plato, which represents the spirited part of human nature that seeks recognition of its dignity.
They argue that our desire to be recognised as authentic human beings, with desires, values, rights and an inherent sense of pride based on the identity we choose for ourselves, is one of the driving forces of history, not least politics. Fukuyama famously argued that the arc of history bent towards liberal democracy, rather than any other political ideology, because it best satisfies our desire for recognition.
Yet our desire for recognition is not limited to our personal identity; it also applies to our group identities. This is behind the rise of so-called ‘identity politics,’ where individuals vote on behalf of the groups to which they belong rather than purely for their own self-interest. After all, you can’t truly understand who someone is without also understanding all the groups to which they belong.
Identity is powerful, which is why The Ethics Centre is exploring its ethical dimensions in this special series of articles. We’ve invited philosophers and commentators to tease out how identity influences our ethical views, looking at how the search for recognition is shaping the modern world and how it’s proving to be a liberating force but also a stifling one. We’ll be examining issues across politics race, culture, gender, sexual identity, and more.
We don’t assume we’ll be able to solve these issues here, but what we can do is help reveal how so many of the seemingly disparate ethical challenges of our time are grounded in one driving force: our desire to know ourselves.
This article is part of our Why identity matters series.
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BY Dr Tim Dean
Dr Tim Dean is Philosopher in Residence at The Ethics Centre and author of How We Became Human: And Why We Need to Change.
Self-interest versus public good: The untold damage the PwC scandal has done to the professions
The unfolding PwC scandal could be considered nothing more than an especially egregious example of ethical failure with dire consequences.
However, there are deeper issues to be examined. The most obvious concerns the proper role of the Australian Public Service, and whether or not efforts by successive governments to hollow it out have caused damage that will take a generation to repair. Less obvious is the damage done to an essential component of Australia’s ethical infrastructure: the professions.
Australian governments have long been captivated by physical and technical infrastructure. Few politicians can resist the opportunity to don a hard hat and hi-vis vest when announcing new investment in road, rail, bridge and dam projects. There is equal pride in initiatives including the National Broadband Network, quantum computing and improved cybersecurity.
Unfortunately, there is little interest in the ethical “infrastructure” that determines the extent of public trust in major public- and private-sector institutions. Without that trust, reform becomes almost impossible – or only after untimely delays and great cost.
As with physical and technical infrastructure, the quality of a nation’s ethical infrastructure has tangible effects on a nation’s economy. For example, Deloitte Access Economics has estimated that just a 10% improvement in ethics, across Australia, would generate an extra A$45 billion in GDP each year.
What is ethical infrastructure?
There are many components to this ethical infrastructure. However, one of the most important is the professions – whose members influence nearly every aspect of our lives. To understand their distinctive role, one needs to recognise the difference between two “worlds”: those of the market on one hand, and the professions on the other.
The essential character of the market was defined by Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. It is a place where self-interested actors satisfy the wants of others. Smith prohibits lying, cheating or the oppressive use of power – as all harm the free market. Self-interested conduct is mediated by the so-called invisible hand, which Smith argues leads to an increase in the stock of common good. Indeed, that is the test any market must pass: does it, in practice, make us all better off?
The second world – the professions – is, in two respects, the opposite of the market. First, members of the professions do not satisfy the wants of others; they are obliged to serve the interests of others. For example, a diabetic might want to consume a large block of chocolate. The market will happily satisfy this want as long as the customer can pay the tariff. However, a doctor will refuse to provide the chocolate because it is not in the interests of their patient to do so.
Second, professionals are obliged to put aside self-interest in favour of the public good. For example, as officers of the court, lawyers are obliged to help in the administration of justice. This takes precedence over duties to the client and to the profession. Only after all other interests have been served may a lawyer look to their self-interest. The same holds for the members of every true profession.
In recognition of this practice, society enters into a social compact with the professions. It accords status, and gives them access to certain work that others may not do. It establishes privileges (such as the shield laws that protect journalists’ sources). The quality of the social compact waxes and wanes over time – but can exist only for as long as the professions honour their commitment to reject the logic of the market.
The importance of independence
It is the ethical foundations of the professions – in particular the putting aside of self-interest – that makes it possible for Australian governments to outsource public-sector functions to large, professional consulting firms such as PwC. After all, governments have an inalienable duty to act solely in the public interest. It is inconceivable they would turn over any of their functions to a self-interested entity. That would be to invite the fox into the hen house.
Central to each of the “Big Four” consulting firms is their auditing practice. Compared with consulting, auditing is a minnow in terms of revenue and influence. However, there lies the core of accounting’s professional ethos with its commitment to what is true and fair.
Auditors should be the quintessential professionals – independent and divorced from the ethos of the market. So, when an auditing firm, like PwC, works for government, it is assumed they can be trusted. Until they cannot.
What impact will PwC’s behaviour have on other professions?
We do not know the full extent of what happened at PwC. However, it seems likely that, at some point, some part of the firm abandoned the world of the professions in favour of the market – placing self-interest before all other considerations.
Now we are left to wonder. Was this just a small part of PwC, or has the rot infected larger parts of the company? If the professional ethos of PwC has been corrupted, how is this risk being managed in other, similar organisations?
Most troubling of all, can society still rely on the social compact it has struck with the professions more generally? Or has this once-vital piece of ethical infrastructure fallen into disrepair?
Whether you care about the quality of our society, or the economy, or the possibility of progress, you should care about the quality of our nation’s ethical infrastructure. It’s time to reinforce what remains so it’s not all lost, through neglect, cynicism or indifference, and to our considerable cost.
This article was originally published in The Conversation.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
The future does not just happen. It is made. And we are its authors.
Of late, I have been thinking about how to describe the impact of the work done by The Ethics Centre. It’s a surprisingly difficult thing to do because our greatest impact typically lies in our influence on what does NOT happen.
For example, when we assist or inspire a person to step back from making a disastrous decision, there is nothing to measure. We can measure the cost of disasters. We can measure the impact of the response to disasters. However, how do we measure the impact of a disaster averted?
Let’s consider this in a wider context. My abiding sense of today’s world is that we remain on the cusp of epoch-defining change. The sense of what is before us has led me back to binge-reading vast swathes of science fiction – and the worlds I encounter there are recognisably connected to our own. Yet, the unbounded power of the authors’ imagination invites the reader to be equally bold in contemplating ‘what might be’. Wondering about ‘what might be’ leads us to the realisation that we are each responsible, at least in part, for the future that actually emerges.
The future does not just happen. It is made. And we are its authors.
And that is why ethics matters. It is humanity’s best tool for the avoidance of disastrously bad decisions – and the nightmare worlds that emerge from them. More optimistically, ethics equips us to make brilliantly good decisions – and the wonderous possibilities that they entail.
We can see this at work in one topical example; the rise and rise of CHATGPT – the most famous of a growing suite of expert systems that already have the capacity to transform our lives. Predictably, there has been a slew of prophecies about the likelihood of both utopian and dystopian futures. The emergence of new technology is always accompanied by excessively optimistic and pessimistic views about its likely effects.
Less predictably, some of the architects of this technology have urged caution. Their call for a measure of self-restraint is not grounded in fear. They simply argue that it is irresponsible to unleash a powerful, transformative force without understanding what we do. In essence, we need to set the ethical parameters within which AI should be developed and deployed. If we get this right, then sound ethics will inform policy and practice that averts all manner of mischief. Yet, the impact of ethical restraint will go unmeasured. Despite this, The Ethics Centre remains actively engaged in work to support the development of ‘responsible AI’ – as evidenced by our joining the Responsible AI Network (RAIN) being led by the CSIRO.
The Centre’s work is aligned to three strategic priorities. First, we seek to exemplify and support good decision making. Second, we work to maintain an open civic space within which the issues facing our society can be discussed – even when there is much room for disagreement. Finally, we seek to strengthen the ‘ethical infrastructure’ of our society – so that they become trustworthy to the extent that the community will rely on its key institutions to exercise good judgement in the public interest. This is especially important to any society that faces major change. For example, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy raises the spectre that some communities (typically linked to older forms of power generation) will bear a disproportionate share of the burdens, while others reap the benefits. If we cannot trust our governments, businesses, regulators, or other institutions to get the balance right, then reform will be slowed or halted – to the detriment of all.
The economic cost of broken ‘ethical infrastructure’ is immense. As Deloitte Access Economics has estimated, a mere ten percent increase in ethics would, by itself, generate an additional $45 Billion dollars per annum in improved GDP. Even more remarkable is that this economic return could be generated, over time, with a one-off investment of only $30 Million in funds. It’s hard to think of a better return on investment. Yet, it remains elusive.
What Australia needs is a truly national institution to help the nation lean into the challenges we face. It needs to become a trusted source of advice for governments and other key decision makers. It needs to build the capacity of our nation’s leaders, in the public and private sectors, to make good decisions – across the board. It needs to support our institutions in their efforts to regain public trust. Only then, will the community allow itself to accept the fundamental reforms that will be necessary to make the most of the future.
The establishment of such an institution will be especially important in its implications for the generations of younger Australians who so readily embrace ethics – in a way that surpasses earlier generations who looked to organised religion for guidance. That is why the Centre is investing in a new youth strategy to engage, at an early stage, with the ethical leaders of the future.
The immediate effects of a significant investment in ethics will be impossible to see. The increase in prosperity will inevitably be attributed to the wisdom of those in power. What will remain invisible are the many acts of folly that sound ethics will have prevented.
That is our conundrum. It is also why we are so deeply grateful for the support provided to us by the individuals, foundations and organisations who support our work. The Ethics Centre begins every financial year without a cent of income ‘locked in’. Nobody ‘needs’ ethics … until they do. So, we remain vulnerable. But, perhaps, that might be one of our greatest strengths – because it keeps the Centre attuned to the fundamental needs of society. Irrelevance is not an option.
So, next time things go better than expected, spare a thought for the possibility that it was the invisible hand of ethics (and not the market) that produced the result. With luck – and the generous support of our donors – we can strengthen that hand for a better future.
With your support, The Ethics Centre can continue to be the leading, independent advocate for bringing ethics to the centre of everyday life in Australia. Click here to make a tax deductible donation today.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Beyond cynicism: The deeper ethical message of Ted Lasso
A truly ethical life requires that we let go of cynicism and strive for a better world.
Long after we’ve forgotten the gags, the on- and off-field shenanigans, and even most of the characters’ names, I suspect we’ll still remember how watching Ted Lasso made us feel.
That’s what makes this American sitcom about an endlessly optimistic NFL coach making the most of an English football team so remarkable today. It’s a show that subverts our expectations about what a typical TV show is all about. Instead of commenting on the ills of the world, or just making fun of them, Ted Lasso – both the character and the show – is devoid of cynicism.
Besides being a refreshing break from the bleak TV that populates our streams, there’s an important ethical message lurking behind Ted’s blunt moustache: in order to become better people and make the world a better place, we need to let go of cynicism.
Cynicism is rife these days. Largely for good reason. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the sheer number and scale of the problems we face today. And it’s easy to lapse into despondency when those in power repeatedly fail to address them. Add to this the increasingly polarised political atmosphere, and the growing sense that the “other side” is not just wrong but is morally bankrupt, and it’s easy to lose faith in human goodness altogether.
Given that popular storytelling is often a reflection of the time we’re living in, it’s no coincidence that it, too, has given over to cynicism. Series like Game of Thrones, White Lotus, Succession, House of Cards and Curb Your Enthusiasm depict duplicitous individuals who are far more consumed by expanding their power and/or covering up their insecurities than changing the world for the better or lifting up those around them.
We relate to these shows. We love to hate the Machiavellian villains. But this kind of storytelling comes at a moral cost. When art only acts as an exaggerated mirror, and only reflects back the worst of our nature, it’s no wonder that we have come to regard any magnanimous gesture with suspicion and any appeal to right the world’s wrongs as being naïve or in vain.
This is the heart of cynicism: a fundamental lack of faith in others’ intentions, an abandonment of hope that the world can be made better, as well as a tacit acknowledgement that we’re powerless to fix any of this ourselves.
The first Cynical age
Cynicism is not unique to our time. There have been other cynical ages, including the one in which the term was coined.
In the late fourth century BCE, corresponding with the rise to power of Alexander of Macedon, Greece also slipped into an age of cynicism. Prior to Alexander, Greece was a land of innovation, progress and (at least for a certain class of Greeks) seemingly boundless possibilities, driven by greater political participation by the people in city states like Athens.
Greek philosophy in the times before Alexander reflected that sense of empowerment and optimism. Thinkers from Pythagoras to Plato debated topics like justice, love, virtue and how to build the perfect state. They acknowledged human failings, but they believed we could – and should – rise above them.
But when Alexander and his successors shifted political power from individuals to concentrate it in the hands of a glory-seeking elite, philosophy shifted also. As Bertrand Russell put it in his History of Western Philosophy, philosophers “no longer asked: how can men create a good State? They asked instead: how can men be virtuous in a wicked world, or happy in a world of suffering?”
During this post-Classical era, four main schools of thought emerged from Greek thinkers, each with its own spin on how to cope in a corrupt world. Epicurus taught that happiness comes from diminishing our desires and learning to accept mortality. The Stoics believed that liberation from suffering came from within, cultivated by personal wisdom and self-control. The Sceptics gave up on the idea of truth altogether. And the Cynics – from whom we get the modern term – rejected all social conventions, including wealth, status or even basic material goods, in favour of living in accordance with raw nature.
It’s probably no coincidence that during our own time, when many of us feel a growing sense of powerlessness to fix the world’s ills, utopian visions have given way to a resurgence of these views. Indeed, Stoicism is undergoing a boom today. It seems many of us have given up trying to change the world for the better. Instead, we’re trying to adapt ourselves to cope with the way it is.
In walks Ted
Ted Lasso represents the peak in a growing trend against cynicism in media, the vanguard of which were Parks and Recreation, Schitt’s Creek and The Good Place. These are shows that subvert the typical formula of modern storytelling. Instead of depicting exaggerated versions of people at their worst, they show us exaggerated versions of people at their best. They tell stories where virtues like positivity, charity and forgiveness are not weaknesses that will be exploited by others but are strengths that help overcome the challenges we face.
That takes courage on behalf of the showrunners. It risks people dismissing uncynical shows as being unrealistic. And of course they are unrealistic, but no more so than the cynical series. But where many shows today are purely about illuminating and critiquing the ills of the world, they have little interest in offering solutions. Non-cynical shows, on the other hand, accept the critique has been made but offer us something ambitious to aim for.
Ethics requires moral imagination, which is the ability to picture the full range of possible choices open to us. And cynicism kills moral imagination. As author Sean P. Carlin puts it, “the stories we tell about the world in which we live are only as aspirational—and inspirational—as the moral imagination of our storytellers.”
Ted Lasso expands our moral imagination. Instead of dismissing people as only being self-interested or cruel, we can picture them as struggling with their own demons and offer them help.
Rather than only seeing the bleakest version of our future, moral imagination encourages us to see the world we want to live in and work towards making it happen, not ignoring the challenges we face but motivating us to overcome them.
While Ted Lasso is paradigmatically non-cynical in the modern sense, there is an interesting hint of the original philosophical Cynicism in the character of Ted. Like Diogenes, the paragon of Cynicism in the ancient world, Ted rejects the conventional metrics of success defined by the society around him. He’s uninterested in wealth or status, and justice to him means more than revenge. He repeatedly, and seemingly authentically, asserts that it’s not winning or losing that matters to him, it’s helping his players be the best versions of themselves they can be.
He also goes through his own arc to embrace another aspect of ancient Cynicism: shamelessness. The Cynics believed that conventions and social norms were bunk. Thus, they felt no shame, because they felt no discomfort in violating social expectations that they dismissed as vacuous. Likewise, Ted goes through his own journey with his anxiety, eventually opening up about it and demonstrating his contempt for norms that would shame him for it.
But Ted Lasso also transcends ancient Cynicism, just as it illustrates a better path than ancient Stoicism. It’s not just about how individuals can come to thrive by learning to cope in a disappointing world. It’s about how assuming the worst about others, and falling into the trap of suspicion and defensiveness, contributes to making the world even more disappointing.
Ted Lasso is not just entertaining. It carries an important ethical message about the virtue of releasing ourselves from cynicism. Yes, it’s unrealistic, but it reminds us that it’s worth having something to aim for, even if it’s likely to forever remain just out of reach.
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BY Dr Tim Dean
Dr Tim Dean is Philosopher in Residence at The Ethics Centre and author of How We Became Human: And Why We Need to Change.
It’s time to increase racial literacy within our organisations
In order establish more culturally diverse and inclusive workplaces, we need to increase our racial literacy.
We only need to look at the pay gap and underrepresentation in leadership to identify systemic racial issues within our organisations. In 2022, the Everyday Respect Report released from EB & Co identified racism as one of the factors impacting psychological safety and workplace culture. While new research from diversity and consultancy firm, MindTribes uncovered a non-Anglo pay gap within Australian organisations.
Workplace norms, systems and biases have sanitised racism to the point where not only it can affect individual’s mental wellbeing, pay and career progression, but also an organisation’s productivity, culture and consumer response. As ethical leaders we have a responsibility to unveil how racial discrimination plays out in our businesses and what strategies we can use to combat them.
An Ethics Exchange gathering in May 2023, welcomed Diversity Council of Australia (DCA) CEO Lisa Annese and Ethics Alliance members as they shared personal experiences and strategies used when developing Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) programs, and how they recognise and tackle racism within their workplaces.
The DCA has evolved over the last 40 years to become a leading entity which promotes and advances more diverse and inclusive workplaces for the benefit of individuals, organisations and the broader community. Annese says to build strategies that tackle racism in our organisations, we need to start with language.
Let’s start with language
It’s important to understand the difference in language when it comes race and culture, particularly within the Australian D&I context. Culture is defined as a combination of characteristics including ethnicity, ancestry, language, and place of origin, whereas race is generally seen as a social construct related to physical characteristics and group identity.
In response to the White Australian policy there was an effort by Gough Whitlam in the late 1960s to remove “race” from common language in order to reduce racism. This shift resulted in a focus on culture over race, and the country adopted terms such as “non-English speaking background”, embracing the concept of multiculturalism. For instance, since the United Nations created their Elimination of Racial Discrimination Day, Australia is the only country globally that doesn’t use the word race. We instead call it Harmony Day with a focus on harmony for the week. That is what is taught in our public schools and celebrated in our workplaces.
Annese suggests this avoidance of the term “race” in favour of “culture” was also an effort to maintain an existing Eurocentric power structure. For example, the term “culturally and linguistically diverse” was introduced, which broadly referred to anyone who couldn’t trace their origins back to Britain – essentially anyone non-Anglo Celtic. This excludes a large group of people with different experiences and perpetuates a sense of “otherness.”
Once we identify the other it can become easy to treat people differently and not afford them the same respect we would expect ourselves.
While understanding people’s culture is useful, it’s crucial to talk about race and to acknowledge the lived experiences of Australians who experience racism.
DCA research suggests that in Australia today, those who experience racism and racial marginalisation are people from non-European backgrounds, and the main cause of racism has less to do with language and culture and focuses more on race – features such as phenotype, visible difference, religious dress, skin tone, and hair texture.
If we want to build more inclusive and diverse businesses, we need to talk about race. And to do so, we must know what it is.
By developing an understanding of how history has sanitised our language and normalised racism in our workplace, we are able to discuss the concept of race in a way that avoids unnecessary distress. It’s important not to make assumptions that the harm felt by malintent, or overt racism is any different from the racism embedded in well-meaning or curious comments about an individual’s appearance or background.
Principles and a framework that emerged from The Ethics Exchange and DCA research to bring racial literacy to the workplace included:
- Build Racial Literacy: Before tackling racism, businesses must first educate their employees about the concept of race. They should understand what race is, how racialisation occurs, and the impact it has on people. This is important because most people have low levels of racial literacy.
- Build Confidence: The second step involves helping employees become confident in their understanding of race and racial issues. This stage ensures employees feel comfortable discussing these topics and are prepared for the next step.
- Talk About Anti-Racism: The final stage is to discuss what it means to be actively anti-racist. It is important that employees understand how they can contribute to an anti-racist environment. This stage of the process can only be effectively implemented once employees have a clear understanding of race and are confident discussing it.
One of the most impactful ways of understanding racism is to hear it from those who have been subject to it, however this carries a huge burden or cultural load. How can their voices be included to develop strategies to combat racism?
- Centre Voices: The experiences and perspectives of those affected by racism must be central to any initiatives addressing it. For instance, if a business is developing a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in Australia, it should involve Indigenous employees in the process.
- Respect Cultural Labour: Organisations should acknowledge the cultural emotional and intellectual labour of employees with different social identities involved in initiatives addressing racism.
- Remunerate Appropriately: If individuals are asked to participate in initiatives to combat racism, particularly if they’re asked to share personal experiences or provide additional insights, they should be appropriately compensated.
- Respect Personal Choice: Not everyone will want to be involved in such initiatives, and that choice should be respected.
- Avoid Overgeneralisation and Presumption: One individual cannot represent an entire group. Avoid making assumptions about an entire race or culture based on the perspectives or experiences of one individual.
- Use Available Resources: In an age where information is readily available, it’s possible to educate oneself about different cultures and races without overly relying on individuals from those backgrounds to teach others.
We’d like to thank Lisa Annese and the Ethics Alliance members who contributed to this important conversation.
Find out more about the DCA’s research here.
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BY The Ethics Alliance
The Ethics Alliance is a community of organisations sharing insights and learning together, to find a better way of doing business. The Alliance is an initiative of The Ethics Centre.
Corporate whistleblowing: Balancing moral courage with moral responsibility
Calling out corporate wrongdoing requires the moral courage to stand up for what you believe in, but also involves recognising the moral agency of others.
The story of Jeff Morris is both inspiring and daunting; inspiring because he decided to take on one of the largest banks in Australia alone by exposing corrupt practices that placed customers in financial danger, and daunting because of the fate that he suffered as a result.
Commonwealth Bank Australia’s (CBA) financial planners knowingly gave harmful financial advice to elderly and vulnerable customers that led them to severe financial losses and emotional distress. Morris spent five years trying to get the CBA and ASIC to confront the wrongdoing and set it right, attempting to force a Parliamentary Inquiry before he finally decided that the only way to protect customers from these practices was to go to the media with his story in 2013. This led to the firing of rogue CBA financial planners involved in these practices and triggered the landmark financial services royal commission.
Today, Jeff Morris stands as an admirable figure, having been awarded the Order of Australia for blowing the whistle on his employer. However, in the immediate aftermath of blowing the whistle on CBA, Morris was fired from the bank, his family left him due to the financial stress his actions put them under, he was diagnosed with PTSD and suffered constant surveillance and harassment.
The whistleblower’s moral dilemma
Corporate whistleblowers, like Morris, face a moral dilemma of balancing competing responsibilities to the organisation they work for and the responsibility they have to the consumer.
As an employee of the CBA, Morris was presumably hired with the condition that he must keep confidential information about the bank’s internal practices. This is often non-controversial. Corporations have valid reasons for not wanting their internal practices revealed, like wanting to protect their unique products and services from competitor corporations. When signing an employment contract, we often find that we’re being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. We’re essentially promising to keep the organisation’s secrets secret.
By blowing the whistle on corporate wrongdoing, we are breaking this very promise. While promise-breaking itself is not necessarily morally wrong, often there is “moral residue” left over. What this means is, we might be justified in breaking a promise, but it might incur an obligation to remedy, say in apologising for breaking the promise, or making up for the broken promise in some compensatory way. This indicates that the breach of contract, in such a sense, does not necessarily leave us “morally clean”.
This is the first moral transgression: the breach of promissory obligation.
When we work for an organisation or corporation, we may find that there is an internal culture of loyalty or expected loyalty to both the organisation itself and to our fellow employees. By blowing the whistle on corporate wrongdoing, we could potentially be harming our fellow colleagues who may be out of work as a result of the disclosures. The organisational culture might be harmed in that we have introduced dissent into a culture that benefits from employee solidarity; the result, a sense of broader distrust.
This is the second moral transgression: a breach of loyalty.
However, as a member of an organisation or corporation that delivers products and services to the public, we also have an obligation toward the public consumer. If, like in Morris’ case, the corporation is delivering a service that is harming the consumer, we might feel an obligation to protect the broader public from these harmful practices.
To not publicly disclose the wrongdoing, we might be committing a third transgression: a breach of a natural duty to not cause harm to others.
A corporate whistleblower’s framework for harm minimisation
If there is sufficient wrongdoing that needs to be called out, it’s important to take appropriate steps to produce the best outcome. The best outcome, in these circumstances, would be one in which harm is minimised to all relevant stakeholders. Business ethicist, Richard T. De George developed, what the field of business ethics today considers the standard ethics framework for responsibly blowing the whistle on corporate wrongdoing.
He sets out the following conditions that suggest when we are morally permitted to blow the whistle and what moral consideration we ought to keep in mind before we do so:
- The firm, through its product or policy, will do serious or considerable harm, to employees or to the public, whether in the person of the user of its product, an innocent bystander or the general public.
- Once the employees identify a serious threat to the user of its product or to the general public, they should report it to their immediate supervisor and make their moral concern known. Unless they do so, their act of whistleblowing is not clearly justifiable.
- If one’s immediate supervisor does nothing effective about the concern or complaint, the employee should exhaust the internal procedures and possibilities within the firm. This usually will involve taking the matter up the managerial ladder, and if necessary – and possible – to the board of directors.
- The whistleblower must have, or have accessible, documented evidence that would convince a reasonable, impartial observer that one’s view of the situation is correct, and that the company’s product or practice poses a serious and likely danger to the public or to the user of the product.
Before we take action, we need moral courage
What De George does not account for, however, is that to follow his guidelines, we must have the moral courage to take action in the first place.
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University, Matthew Pianalto writes that moral courage involves “facing other persons while upholding some morally motivated cause and enduring resistance or retaliation that may occur in response to one’s actions”.
We often think of courage as involving being brave when taking an action that presents a danger to ourselves. It takes courage to jump into dangerous surf to save someone from drowning. In this sense, courage is an enabling device.
Morris demonstrated this aspect of courage: he was aware of the retaliation that he would experience as a result of blowing the whistle yet did so anyway.
However, moral courage involves something else: a requirement to face others. This requirement, Pianalto writes, involves resisting “the objectification of others, even those [we] oppose in value and action”. Corporate whistleblowers are exercising moral agency by taking actions that uphold or preserve what we think is morally right and just. However, moral courage also involves recognising the moral agency of others. It is easy to other-ise those we consider our moral adversaries. We can justify taking action against them easier if we denounce them as being morally depraved.
By not considering the corporation as being made up of other humans, i.e., other moral agents just like ourselves, we may become more inclined to ignore the conditions of harm minimisation set out above. We might be prioritising the moral values we are trying to uphold at the expense of the moral responsibility we have to those that might be adversely affected by our actions. As Pianalto writes, by offering justifications for our actions, we are “[acknowledging] the capacity of others to give and receive reasons, to modify their views, revise their intentions and to change their minds…”.
Morris seems to have exhibited moral courage. He took every precaution necessary, heeding (whether he was aware of it or not) the guidelines set by ethicists like De George to protect not only his family (who raised concerns about how they might be affected by his actions), but also those other moral agents working for ASIC and the CBA that may not have been involved in the wrongdoing.
Whistleblowing on corporate wrongdoing is a serious act, one that requires us to take mindful steps. If these steps are taken, they can reduce the moral courage required of us to act.
If you’re struggling with navigating a difficult decision in your professional or personal life, our free independent helpline, Ethi-call can provide expert and impartial guidance to examine all aspects of the situation and help you find a path forward. Book a call now.
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BY Kristina Novakovic
Kristina Novakovic is a writer and PhD student in applied ethics at UNSW Canberra. She is currently working on The Ethics of Political Whistleblowing.
A new era of reckoning: Teela Reid on The Voice to Parliament
Later this year Australians will be asked to vote in a referendum on a Voice to Parliament. Can this conversation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander constitutional recognition reconcile the truth of Australia’s past? Or have we embarked on a new era of reckoning with the risk that comes with a referendum?
In April 2022, Proud Wiradjuri and Wailwan woman and lawyer, Teela Reid sat down with Dr Simon Longstaff AO to discuss what reckoning means to her, what we need to make an informed decision on this vote, and what it means for us – collectively and individually.
Dr Simon Longstaff: When I think of reckoning, three things come to mind. Firstly, there’s ‘reckoning’ as in finding your bearings, dead reckoning. There’s another sense in which you reckon up the bill. And then there’s the third sense in which reckoning can be taken as a moment of recognition of one’s responsibilities and making us confront the reality of who and where we are, and what we’ve done. Perhaps we can touch on all three of those…
Teela Reid: My essay, Reckoning, Not Reconciliation, was born out of a frustration with the concept of reconciliation. I had attempted to dismiss it in some ways – whether that was to be provocative or just trying to grapple with my own sense of the world. The past three, almost four decades, has been defined in so-called Australia under this notion of reconciliation. And so, for me, as a Wiradjuri Wailwan woman, the life that I have been fortunate to live, had nothing to do with reconciliation, but it was in fact in spite of it. For me, having grown up in my community with the stories of my ancestors, my paternal and maternal lineages being hounded onto missions, laws passed so we couldn’t speak our native tongue, this notion of reconciliation kind of popped up.
I remember growing up in that community and then walking into school where we were trained that this notion of reconciliation was to make us feel good. There was almost a sense of denial of the truth. I remember, for example, learning about the Anzacs and there were no soldiers that we were told about that were Aboriginal men or women. And then I’d walk home and my grandparents would sit me around the campfire and give me a whole different education.
I remember just feeling really frustrated with the world. I want to unravel that and unpack this notion of reckoning. To me, it’s about everyone on this continent embracing the discomfort of the hard work we need to get done.
Dr Simon Longstaff: How do you look at the obligations you have – in a structure where elders still are the most significant decision makers within a community – and the need to balance that cultural obligation with obligations arising in a structure like the law; where it’s about the quality of reason, the precision of language and the authority of precedent?
Teela Reid: The western law is a discipline, it’s a practice. I vividly recall being at law school wanting to throw my textbooks up against the library when we were learning about Dicey’s rule of law where we’re all equal before the law. I remember thinking “How do I reconcile this with the stories that I know?” Clearly, the law has never treated my people fairly. There’s never been a fair go in this country for First Nations Peoples. So having those stories in my heart and in my spirit, I still took the opportunity that I was given to go to law school and now to practice law. It’s something I don’t take lightly at all, because I think we would be much worse off as a peoples if we were to take those opportunities for granted and not do the hard yards and live out those opportunities to empower our people.
Dr Simon Longstaff: Can these different definitions of ‘reckoning’ exist side by side? Or is that a very significant tension in your life?
Teela Reid: It’s a constant tension, to be very frank. It is a very constant tension to not lose yourself as a First Nations woman in this place that’s now called Australia and you’re constantly walking a fine line. When I think about reckoning, it’s also about power. It’s about who has the authority to make decisions in different contexts while at the community level our governance systems operate in a very specific way. I think that’s what Australia forgets. We have very ancient governance systems here still very much intact. They might not be written in legislation or rule books, but they’re passed down orally through our ways of knowing and being.
We have this higher order in Australia where there’s parliament, there’s states, there’s territories, there’s people making all these different decisions, but at the very heart of that, there is still the omission of the First Nations and there’s still an act of erasure in that. And the symbols are everywhere. It’s in the flag, it’s in the anthem, it’s in these ways that Australians speak their identity that I just don’t relate to.
Dr Simon Longstaff: The concept of ‘payback’ is sometimes misunderstood as if it’s based in the need for revenge. Instead, it’s about those who have done wrong making restoring balance to the community – paying back what has been taken to those who have suffered loss. Is that the kind of reckoning that you have in mind – bringing it to that point where people recognise loss as a give and take?
Teela Reid: It’s about the reconciling of the balance. There does need to be compensation, there does need to be these tough decisions and reparations for what First Nations Peoples have lost there.
The other way in which I see it, there is a level of discomfort that comes down to this truth telling notion that we’re going to need to embrace. Where Australians are at now – each one of you are advocates, you’re campaigners. You have agency in this movement. Reckoning is going to be a really difficult process, unlike reconciliation where we’ve all felt good with our wraps, our cupcakes and our teas. No, this is going to be quite difficult.
For so long, for 250+ years, as a nation we’ve avoided that discomfort that comes with trying to heal these wounds. Because you might not see the physical wounds, but they’re very deep and they’re intergenerational. When we think of reckoning, we’re all going to have to step up to the plate. And often what happens in a truth telling process, it’s that First Nations Peoples get the onus of having to speak our truth, when in fact white Australia needs to speak its truth. What did your ancestors do to my ancestors? Let’s start to have an open dialogue and take responsibility for that pain. Because I don’t think that we can heal until we reckon with the discomfort and the pain that I think as a nation is going to take many years to get through.
Dr Simon Longstaff: Whatever the result, the proposed referendum on a Voice to Parliament is going to be an extraordinary moment. What are your hopes at this point?
Teela Reid: I hope that people are willing to step up and be engaged and make informed choices for themselves in a conversation that should absolutely be based on the facts and not one in which we should be enlivening racism or anything like that. I do believe it’ll pass. I think there is so much goodwill in the Australian community.
If you look at history, the most successful referendum in 1967, shows that Australians actually feel very deeply on this issue. I’ve travelled to lots of different parts of the country, and engaged with fence seaters or people who want to protest to these kinds of conversations. By the end of it, you sit down, you listen, you work through these conversations and people’s hearts really get it.
Dr Simon Longstaff: Is this a beginning of a new set of possibilities in this country?
Teela Reid: I do believe it is. We all know the Uluru Statement has called for a First Nation’s Voice. One of the things I am grappling with both in the legal sense and the moral sense, it’s the enormous compromise our people have to make decade after decade after decade for this nation to just have a breakthrough. It happened with land rights. The Barunga Statement was gifted to Hawke. Hawke promised a treaty, he gave the nation reconciliation. It’s probably why we’re three, four decades behind right now. I don’t think that Prime Ministers like Hawke should be revered for what they’ve done. Even around when Whitlam came in for his short time in power, there were decades of activism and movements that were demanding big things, big changes. And it was only because of that activism that within those three, four years there was able to be this watershed moment of legislation and changes.
One of the things I am grappling with both in the legal sense and the moral sense, it’s the enormous compromise our people have to make decade after decade after decade for this nation to just have a breakthrough.
And so here I am thinking now, there’s another compromise being made. Perhaps this is more my moment of having to grapple with the way in which compromises are made in the political space.
I hope that everyday Australians are able to take this opportunity this year to actually reflect and educate themselves on the bigger picture and part of the story to this. Because we’re only really seeing it through that one little kind of myopic lens now that there’s going to be one ballot box and you’re going to be voting yes or no. But there is so much more to this.
Simon Longstaff: Are you optimistic that people understand this? Can we resolve the question of legitimacy?
Teela Reid: I do believe it’ll pass, yes. I think there’s so much good faith and goodwill in the people. The strategy behind this movement is correct. Going to the people and not the politicians is what changed this nation. At every single turning point the only reason it’s on the national agenda is because of everyday Australians. It won’t be easy. I think that people shouldn’t get complacent about where we are now. Between now and the ballot box, every single one of you is going to have start your own campaign. Take this extremely seriously. For someone like me, it doesn’t stop.
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This is an abridged version of In Conversation with Teela Reid. Watch the full discussion below.
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