The institutional abuse of children detained by the government of the Northern Territory is a bone-chilling example of what occurs when raw power is exercised without ethical restraint.

The scenes broadcast by the ABC’s Four Corners program in July 2016 were the stuff of nightmares – the kind of thing done by ‘other people’, in ‘other countries’, in ‘other circumstances’. But this nightmare became real, for us – here and now. The prime minister announced a Royal Commission to investigate what had happened and why.

But first, we need to look at the general conditions that made the unthinkable possible. Those conditions do not just apply in the context of juvenile ‘justice’ in the Northern Territory. Australian governments are responsible for the detention of people throughout our states and territories as well as on Manus Island and Nauru. In every case, there is a risk (and often a reality) of people with power exercising it in a manner that fails the test of the most basic standards of decency.

Every person who is detained deserves to be treated with a basic measure of respect – even those who committed the foulest crimes still retain their intrinsic dignity as a ‘person’.

Second, we need to reckon with arguments that the ‘ends justify the means’ and the prisoner or detainee is the author of their own fate – that they ‘deserve what they get’.

Normally, you would expect parliaments in a liberal democracy to place strict curbs on the exercise of power by government officials. But in recent years, the tendency has been to take the opposite path – to smooth the way for excess.

This has been done by creating numerous exceptions to the application of usual legal and ethical restraints that have been designed, over millennia, to tame power – such as judicial oversight, civil and criminal liability, media scrutiny and respect for individual rights like habeas corpus.

Australia has wide exemptions – for members of the intelligence services, for those detaining suspected terrorists, for detention centres and, as evidenced in the Four Corners report, for those guarding juvenile detainees in the Northern Territory.

Section 215 of the Northern Territory’s Youth Justice Act confers a wide-ranging immunity on virtually all people working with juvenile detainees. Specifically it says:

“The person is not civilly or criminally liable for an act done or omitted to be done by the person in good faith in the exercise or purported exercise of a power, or the performance or purported performance of a function, under this Act.”

It is yet to be determined whether or not the behaviour revealed by Four Corners was done ‘in good faith’. If so, then the people responsible can never be held to account. The parliament of the Northern Territory has, for all intents and purposes, written a blank cheque.

Cultural failure is the responsibility of those in positions of authority. It cannot be addressed by lopping off the heads of a few ‘rotten apples’ buried in the depths of the barrel.

These provisions were likely enacted as part of a law-and-order campaign. It probably never occurred to legislators that children might be tear-gassed, bound to chairs (and all the rest) by their guards. I’ve no doubt they are now appalled at what has been done. But their lack of forethought does not lessen their responsibility for what they have made possible. It only deepens it.

Governments bear the ultimate responsibility for the treatment of those they detain. Such responsibilities cannot be outsourced. Every person who is detained deserves to be treated with a basic measure of respect – even those who committed the foulest crimes still retain their intrinsic dignity as a person. If we do not deny this for the worst of humanity, how can it be absent for children? They may be angry. They may be rebellious. They may be violent. Even so, they are children. Our children.

It is almost certainly the case that those responsible for abuse are not monsters. They will be just like most of us – most likely unable to conceive of treating their own children as they have those in detention. It’s an age-old puzzle. How can basically good people end up doing such terrible deeds?

It will be revealing to see if we take a wider look at what made this national disgrace possible and ask where else the same seeds have been planted.

There are a number of factors that were likely at work here:

• The guards could have been conditioned to look at their task through a purely legal lens – ‘if it’s not illegal it’s not wrong’.
• An element of tribalism – people conforming to the norms of a tight (usually isolated) group that overwhelms the dictates of individual conscience.
• A belief they were serving a ‘higher good’ (law and order) and their child victims deserved harsh treatment.
• A belief that the methods employed were ‘best practice’ sanctioned by a ‘respected authority’.
• A sense the children were not deserving of basic respect because they were ‘not like us’ – most likely linked to their Aboriginality.
• And most importantly, people within the group may have questioned what was being done while lacking the moral courage to speak out for fear (usually well-founded) of retribution.

Cultural failure is the responsibility of those in positions of authority. It cannot be addressed by lopping off the heads of a few ‘rotten apples’ buried in the depths of the barrel. Instead, we need to look at the ‘rotten barrel’ – and who made and maintained it.

How we respond to this issue will tell us a lot about Australia and its people. In particular, it will be revealing to see if we take a wider look at what made this national disgrace possible and ask where else the same seeds have been planted.

Australia is one of the 19 countries in the world that legally enforces the vote. For Australian citizens voting is not merely a right, but also a duty. First introduced in Queensland in 1915, extended to the whole country in 1924, compulsory voting is a salient feature of the Australian electoral system. But is it democratic?

The main argument in defence of compulsory voting is the importance of raising citizens’ participation in elections. Australia’s turn-out rate has never fallen below 90% since 1924, in striking comparison with most Western countries that struggle to reach 60%. These are nevertheless, merely quantitative considerations: the fact that more people go to vote is not a better thing for democracy. In fact, it could be argued that compulsory voting is likely to do more damage than good, by reducing the quality of the electoral outcome.

Forcing everyone to vote means that the voice of those with no interest in politics will influence the decision about who rules the country.

Forcing everyone to vote means that the voice of those with no interest in politics will influence the decision about who rules the country. This generates what author Jason Brennan calls ‘pollution of the polls’ in his book The ethics of voting1 and is one of the main causes of the actual crisis of democracy worldwide: incompetent politicians winning elections through media control (the recent case of Italy under Silvio Berlusconi epitomises this phenomenon).

By the same token, compulsory voting cannot be defended by arguing that a government’s legitimacy of a majority formed by a low turnout is questionable, for numbers alone do not add credibility in this regard.

Those who do not care about politics should not vote.

Favouring democracy to other forms of government cannot be because of the mere fact that democracy allows everyone’s voice in the public arena. This might be, if anything, a reason against democracy. Dragging people to the polls will do nothing to improve the quality of our democratic lives, insofar as people do not take seriously what they are doing. There must be something else that makes democracy preferable to other forms of government.

This something else is the empowerment of the citizen. In a democracy, everyone has the power to partake in determining the rules according to which the community should be run. However, the misunderstanding lies in the fact that democracy does not entitle citizens to do everything: it confers not only entitlements but also responsibilities. Those who do not care about politics should not vote.

It could even be argued that they should not have a right to vote, and maybe the state would be better off justifiably preventing them from, not forcing them into, voting. Citizens should undergo a basic competence test, as with driving. This is because careless voters may seriously undermine those other citizens who spend time and energy gathering sufficient information before voting.

People’s efforts to follow politics to develop an informed idea might be cancelled out by the vote of someone else who does not care, but still is given the power to vote. In such a situation, making the effort to follow politics might even be irrational for the individual citizen, given that this effort may well be wasted due to the careless voters. Thus, compulsory voting backfires twice, since it even makes it pointless for citizens to develop political awareness.

Compulsory voting may advance the misleading idea that democracy works even without citizens’ commitment or responsibility.

It is not only wrong to think citizens have a duty to vote. As Brennan argues in his book, it is rather the case that some citizens (those who do not care about politics) have a duty to not vote, for we all have duties to not cause damage to others. It is also the case that not everyone has the right to vote, for the latter is not an unconditional entitlement we receive through mere membership to a democratic community. If people do not care about politics, then they do not have a right to participate—forcing them to vote is counterintuitive, and counterproductive. The right to vote can be gained, and lost, depending on one’s commitment to democratic values.

Compulsory voting does not seem to offer any substantial advantage to the democratic life of a country, since quantity does not mean quality (and in the end, it is the quality of our decision-making procedures that should matter). Compulsory voting may advance the misleading idea that democracy works even without citizens’ commitment or responsibility. To be sure, no one should be forced to be a responsible citizen: however, neither should anyone be forced to do what responsible citizens can do; that is, cast their vote at election time.

Reference

1. Brennan, J. (2011), The ethics of voting, Princeton University Press

It’s Monday morning in Newcastle when a child arrives at school, places her finger on the scanner, and waits until a crackly electronic voice acknowledges her.

In Sydney, a wall-mounted CCTV camera records a 12-year-old boy entering a classroom and taking his seat. While this might sound like an Orwellian prophecy, it’s slowly becoming reality. Surveillance technologies such as CCTV cameras and biometrics are being used in schools across Australia. What’s the point? And what are the issues we need to be aware of?

Australia is tentatively following in the footsteps of the UK in implementing surveillance in its schools. In England, it is estimated that 85% of secondary schools have some form of CCTV system, and that a third systematically fingerprint pupils from the age of four. Schools in Australia haven’t reached the same level of near-ubiquity yet, but they are demonstrating a growing appetite.

The effectiveness of CCTV has never been proven and public support is often based on unsubstantiated political rhetoric that it ‘works’.

More than 50 schools in NSW have CCTV cameras in playgrounds and outside dining areas, with plans to install them in classrooms and corridors. Similarly, in Western Australia where the Department of Education confirmed its plans to roll out systems across the state’s schools, half of Perth’s secondary government schools have installed CCTV. Further momentum has been provided by the WA State School Teachers Union that tabled a motion to have at least five surveillance cameras installed in all schools.

The overarching reason cited for the use of CCTV is the prevention and detection of crime. However, it is important to remember that the effectiveness of CCTV has never been proven and public support is often based on unsubstantiated political rhetoric that it ‘works’. In the UK, arguably the CCTV capital of the world, a government funded evaluation failed to find evidence of efficacy. Just one out of 14 CCTV systems demonstrated a significant reduction in crime. More recent studies have revealed that for every 1000 cameras in London, just one crime per year is solved. A sobering thought when the government has already invested more than £500 million in the equipment.

Debate about asylum seekers and refugees, especially when it concerns “boat people”, is often characterised by misrepresentation and hysteria. Amid all of the politics concerning the issue, the ethical dimensions of asylum are not always given their proper attention.

This paper seeks to offer a brief guide to the ethics of asylum and refugees, focusing in particular on four general questions:

1. What should be the place of empathy and compassion in our moral reasoning with respect to asylum seekers and refugees?
2. To what extent must any ethical account of refugee policy incorporate concerns about practical or political feasibility?
3. What is the nature of Australia’s moral obligations to asylum seekers and refugees, and to what extent are these shaped by our understanding of membership?
4. Can mandatory detention and offshore processing be ethically justified?

It would be a demonstration of good faith if Australia should increase its intake of refugees under its humanitarian program.

It is argued that empathy should figure in ethical reasoning, that it is irresponsible to adopt an ethical framework without attention to practical feasibility, and that in a liberal democracy, moral obligations are complicated by a value of self-determination.

In policy terms, the paper argues that it is difficult to justify the continuation of mandatory detention, and that onshore processing of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat is the ideal response. Yet the latter would be best achieved with bipartisan political support and as part of a credible, regional solution. By itself, a shift to onshore processing is likely to lead to an increase in the arrival of boats carrying asylum seekers wanting to make it to Australian territory.

In such a scenario, political leaders must educate public opinion about asylum seekers and refugees and avoid politicking over boat people. Where such resolve is missing, a shift to onshore processing may carry the risk of a number of “spillover” effects – in particular, the possible undermining of public acceptance of a substantial, racially non-discriminatory immigration program, and of a multicultural Australian society.

If there is to be offshore processing, as may well be the case, there must be legislated minimum standards for how asylum seekers are treated in any offshore facility, based on relevant human rights standards, with adequate legal protections. It is also important that any durable policy response involves a regional dimension. It is important to ensure Australia bears a larger burden, if there is to be successful cooperation with our regional neighbours, particularly in stemming the arrival of asylum seekers by boat. It would be a demonstration of good faith if Australia should increase its intake of refugees under its humanitarian program.

There is also merit in proposals to establish an independent commission to facilitate informed public debate, and an independent authority to administer Australia’s humanitarian programs. At least until there can be strong bipartisan political leadership on this issue, it may be necessary to seek an institutionalised form of depoliticising this most divisive of issues.

Read Dr Tim Soutphommasane’s introduction to the Ethics of Asylum and Refugees Symposium, held on 30 June 2011.