How will we teach the robots to behave themselves?
The era of artificial intelligence (AI) is upon us. On one hand it is heralded as the technology that will reshape society, making many of our occupations redundant.
On the other, it’s talked about as the solution that will unlock an unfathomable level of processing efficiency, giving rise to widespread societal benefits and enhanced intellectual opportunity for our workforce.
Either way, one thing is clear – AI has an ability to deliver insights and knowledge at a velocity that would be impossible for humans to match and it’s altering the fabric of our societies.
The impact that comes with this wave of change is remarkable. For example, IBM Watson has been used for early detection of melanoma, something very close to home considering Australians and New Zealanders have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Watson’s diagnostic capacity exceeds that of most (if not all) human doctors.
Technologists in the AI space around the world are breaking new ground weekly – that is an exciting testament to humankind’s ability. In addition to advancements in healthcare, 2018 included milestones in AI being used for autonomous vehicles, with the Australian government announcing the creation of a new national office for future transport technologies in October.
However, the power to innovate creates proportionately equal risk and opportunity – technology with the power to do good can, in almost every case, be applied for bad. And in 2019 we must move this conversation from an interesting dinner-party conversation to a central debate in businesses, government and society.
AI is a major area of ethical risk. It is being driven by technological design processes that are mostly void of robust ethical consideration – a concern that should be the top of the agenda for all of us. When technical mastery of any kind is divorced from ethical restraint the result is tyranny.
The knowledge that’s generated by AI will only ever be the cold logic of the machine. It lacks the nuanced judgment that humans have. Unless AI’s great processing power is met and matched with an equal degree of ethical restraint, the good it creates is not only lost but potentially damaging.The lesson we need to learn is this: just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should.
Ethical knowledge
As citizens, our priority must be to ensure that AI works in the interests of the many rather than the few.
Currently, we’re naively assuming that the AI coders and developers have the ethical knowledge, understanding and skills to navigate the challenges that their technological innovations create.
In these circumstances, sound ethical judgment is just as important a skill as the ability to code effectively. It is a skill that must be learned, practised and deployed. Yet, very little ethical progress or development has been made in the curriculum to inform the design and development of AI.
This is a “human challenge” not a “technology challenge”. The role of people is only becoming more important in the era of AI. We must invest in teaching ethics as applied to technological innovation.
Building a platform of trust
In Australia, trust is at an all-time low because the ethical infrastructure of our society is largely damaged – from politics to sport to religious institutions to business. Trust is created when values and principles are explicitly integrated into the foundations of what is being designed and built. Whatever AI solution is developed and deployed, ethics must be at the core – consciously built into the solutions themselves, not added as an afterthought.
Creating an ethical technologically advanced culture requires proactive and intentional collaboration from those who participate in society: academia, businesses and governments. Although we’re seeing some positive early signs, such as the forums that IBM is creating to bring stakeholders from these communities together to debate and collaborate on this issue, we need much more of the same – all driven by an increased sense of urgency.
To ensure responsible stewardship is at the centre of the AI era, we need to deploy a framework that encourages creativity and supports innovation, while holding people accountable.
This story first appeared on Australian Financial Review – republished with permission.
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.”
Film Review: If Beale Street Could Talk
James Baldwin was one of the great American writers of the twentieth century.
His elegant, articulate and keenly perceptive work bore witness to the hostile, day-to-day realities in which African Americans lived, and the psychological implications of racism for society as a whole.
His fifth novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, is no exception. Forty-four years after it was published, Moonlight director Barry Jenkins has adapted it for the screen.
A different type of love story
A hypnotic, visually sumptuous and intimate love story, Beale Street has little of the structure of a traditional romance. The film begins, for instance, with the generic arc of courtship already complete. We first see the two young protagonists – Tish Rivers and her boyfriend Alfonzo ‘Fonny’ Hunt – walking slowly together in a park, their affections clear and perfectly mirrored. Growing up as childhood friends in the Bronx, there was never a time they did not love each other.
The story instead bears testimony to the resilience of love, and the strength it endows those who have faith in it. Here, we witness its many forms arrayed against a vast, malicious and coldly impersonal system which is rigged to destroy black lives and fracture the most precious of bonds.
Barely a minute into screen time, the plot throws Fonny (Stephan James) behind a glass wall. He’s in jail after being accused of rape. To his accuser and certainly the police, his innocence is irrelevant. As a black man, his identity in the white cultural imagination is as a violent savage – he was always-already condemned, regardless of his actions. It is through this transparent barrier that Tish (KiKi Layne) tells him that she is carrying his child.
When the past and present merge
Following this revelation, the story diverges in two interweaving streams of past and present. One, filled with hope and secret joys, sees the young couple come to understand each other as man and woman, while nursing dreams of a future together. In the second narrative, hope is not a simple impulse but an inviolable duty, as their baby swells in Tish’s womb, Fonny’s case stagnates and despair threatens. Each scene is freighted with the viewer’s knowledge that the lovers’ destiny is not their own.
Tish’s tale
This second narrative is also very much Tish’s story, and shifts its focus to a different kind of love. Beale Street is most affecting in its portrait of the Rivers family, who support Tish wholly and will do whatever they must to fight for her and the new life within her. Regina King won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Tish’s mother Sharon, who embodies a fierce, calm and indominable maternal courage. Her father Joseph (played with a rich, growling warmth by Colman Domingo) and older sister Ernestine (Teyonah Parris) readily take on the role of advocate and defender.
Their unity has its foil in Fonny’s family, the Hunts, who refuse to partake in any struggle they did not ask for. Headed by a spiteful and Godfearing mother, who curses her unborn grandchild and rationalises prison as a place in which Fonny can find the Lord, theirs is a pride born of self-serving weakness. The Rivers’ contrasting pride is one born of unassailable dignity and a determination to act, in spite of the odds arrayed against them.
“What do you think is going to happen?” asks Mr Hunt when Joseph lays out a plan for them to steal from their workplaces to help their children.
“What we make happen.”
“Easy to say,” Hunt protests.
“Not if you mean it,” Joseph levelly responds.
Emotional explotation
Through these characters, Beale Street puts forward the case for love as the single most steadfast bastion against the dehumanising machine of systemic oppression. Those characters without this vital force are vulnerable to emotional exploitation – betraying family and friends to protect themselves. Hunt’s mother sacrifices her son rather than align herself with his fate.
Fonny’s old friend Daniel also deserts him when his words could have saved him, his integrity broken by the terror of returning to a prison that broke him. And Fonny’s accuser is so traumatised, she is locked in a prison of her own pain, insensible and insensitive the suffering of others.
None of these individuals are free. Living in a constant wash of fear without refuge or reprieve has deprived them of their integrity, transforming them into actively complicit agents in the perpetuation of a racist structure. This, Baldwin’s story reveals, is perhaps the most wretched and insidiously effective mechanism of tyranny.
Racial tensions
Daniel is sure that white man is the devil. But Beale Street itself doesn’t espouse this view. At crucial junctures, white allies take risks to intercede against social, economic, police and court racial injustice. A Jewish real estate agent grants the lovers a path to an affordable home. An old storekeeper stands up to a reptilian policeman. And Fonny’s lawyer is a ‘white boy just out of college’.
At two hours, the film is languid and poetic, with gorgeous cinematography by James Laxton. The deliberate slow pacing and the use of frequent close-ups demands of the viewer they recognise the central (and very beautiful) characters as subjects. In a culture which frequently effaces black bodies, fetishises them, or arbitrarily fashions them into villains, these images are quietly radical. The film plays out between the steady gaze of the two lovers, and plays within the gaze of an audience that can’t look away.
Quietly significant too, is the film’s inclusion of moments which are superfluous to the plot, but vital to the immersive legacy of Beale Street. One, impossible to forget: Tish’s parents swaying before a jazz record in the family loungeroom, holding each other close, smiling in the new knowledge of themselves as grandparents to be.
Final thoughts
Opening in Australia on Valentine’s Day, Jenkins’ film is a tender dream of two lovers trapped in a too-real nightmare. It is not difficult to remember that this nightmare still torments the freedoms of racial minorities in America, ‘the land of the free’, and other nations too – whether they characterise themselves as progressive democracies or not.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Banking royal commission: The world of loopholes has ended
Following the release of Commissioner Hayne’s royal commission final report on the banking and financial services sector, our Executive Director shares his take on the findings for the Australian Financial Review.
The Final Report of the Hayne Royal Commission is both unsparing and inspired.
Mr Hayne casts a wide net in his analysis of what went wrong in Australia’s banking and finance industry. However, there is one group on whom he pins ultimate accountability; the boards and senior executives of the entities whom he found to be at fault, “Nothing that is said in this Report should be understood as diminishing that responsibility. Everything that is said in this Report is to be understood in the light of that one undeniable fact …”
That is the unsparing part of the Report.
Kenneth Hayne is inspired in his injunction to all Australian business that it must apply some underlying principles, “These norms of conduct are fundamental precepts. Each is well-established, widely accepted, and easily understood.”
- Obey the law;
- Do not mislead or deceive;
- Act fairly;
- Provide services that are fit for purpose;
- Deliver services with reasonable care and skill; and
- When acting for another, act in the best interests of that other.
A dominant theme in Mr Hayne’s final report is that it is time to eliminate the law’s own exceptions to these principles – a series of ‘loopholes’ – often the product of political convenience – that allow the underlying principles to be violated by those with the wit, means and licence to do so.
There is a subtle quality to Mr Hayne’s arguments on this point. At no time does he suggest that ethical commitments should be elevated above compliance with the law. Indeed, he is clear that he opposes that approach. However, he makes it clear that the Law must conform with ethics – in the form of ‘underlying principle’.
The implications of this for the targets of his harshest criticism – boards and senior executives – are profound. For too long, it has been possible to ease through a loophole and take comfort from the fact that questionable (and profitable) conduct was ‘strictly legal’. That approach has cost us all dearly.
The fact that a loophole was available to be exploited does not mean that it should have been. The capacity to exercise ethical restraint (not to do everything that is possible) was always latent within the ranks of boards and senior management.
To be fair, we should acknowledge that boards and senior management have often exercised that capacity. We will never know (and credit will never be given) for the many cases of good judgement that have prevailed. Unfortunately, in the current environment, a multitude of good decisions counts for little when compared to the relatively few, but emblematic, cases of ethical failure – some of which may also have been unlawful.
Ethical failure occurs when core purposes, values and principles are betrayed. On some occasions this is done in a knowing and deliberate manner. More often, the cause is a failure of culture and governance (both intimately linked) that leads an organisation to ‘sleep walk’ into an ethical ‘death pit’.
Recognising this, Commissioner Hayne recommends that:
All financial services entities should, as often as reasonably possible, take proper steps to:
- Assess the entity’s culture and its governance
- Identify any problems with that culture and governance
- Deal with those problems, and
- Determine whether the changes it has made have been effective
In doing so, Hayne supports and extends the approach already adopted by APRA and ASIC by looking beyond ‘risk culture’ to evaluate the whole.
The Ethics Centre is a pioneer in the development and application of world-class tools for undertaking precisely the kind of evaluation being recommended by Hayne. This approach should not be limited to banking and financial services. It is essential for all organisations – whether in the private or public sectors.
The trouble is that boards and senior managers are often deeply reluctant to look into a well-polished mirror that reveals the truth about their organisation. Instead, they look to those who offer a ‘magic mirror’ that always reflects the comforting myth that you are the ‘fairest of them all’. It takes a certain kind of moral courage to ask for the truth. Perhaps Kenneth Hayne has strengthened the sinews of corporate Australia.
We will see!
Australia was one of the first countries to develop an ethical framework for banking and finance. The Banking + Finance Oath was created in the aftermath of the global financial crisis – at a time when all seemed to be relatively rosy on the domestic front.
The great disappointment was that so few people took up the opportunity to commit to the ‘underlying principles’ on which the BFO is based. Perhaps too many people saw that reality fell too short of the ideal.
If ever there was a time to make something better, it is now. In the wake of the Hayne royal commission, it is time for the ethical majority, working within banking and finance, to step up. Whatever your role or seniority – it’s time to own what is noble in the aims of banking and finance and to give life to its ideals.
Embrace underlying principle, measure and achieve alignment, exercise ethical restraint, regain trust. Do so in the expectation of profit and to earn that most elusive of rewards: a good name.
That is the opportunity that lies latent in the recommendations of the Hayne Report.
Dr Simon Longstaff is executive director of The Ethics Centre
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
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.”
Australia Day: Change the date? Change the nation
Like clockwork, every January Australians question when is, or even if there is, an appropriate time to celebrate the nationhood of Australia.
Each year, a growing number of Australians acknowledge that the 26thof January is not an appropriate date for an inclusive celebration.
There are no sound reasons why the date shouldn’t be changed but there are plenty of reasons why the nation needs to change.
I’ve written about that date before, its origins and forgotten stories and recent almost-comical attempts to protect a public holiday. I choose not to repeat myself, because the date will change.
For many, the jingoism behind Australia Day is representative of a settler colonialism state that should not be preserved. A nation that is not, and has never been fair, free or young. So, I choose to put my energy into changing the nation. And I am not alone.
People are catching up and contributing their voices to the call to change the nation, but this is not a new discussion. On 26 January 1938, on the 150thanniversary of the British invasion of this continent, a group of Aboriginal people in NSW wrote a letter of protest, calling it a Day of Mourning. They asked the government to consider what that day meant to them, the First Peoples, and called for equality and justice.
Since 1938, the 26thof January continues to be commemorated as a Day of Mourning. The date is also known as Survival Day or Invasion Day to many. Whatever people choose to call that day, it is not a date suitable for rejoicing.
It was inconsiderate to have changed the date in 1994 to the 26th January. And, now the insensitivity is well known, it’s selfish not to change the date again. The only reasons I can fathom for opposition to changing the date is white privilege, or perhaps even racism.
These antiquated worldviews of white superiority will continue to haunt Australia until a critical mass has self reflected on power and privilege and whiteness, and acknowledges past and present injustices. I believe we’re almost there – which explains the frantic push back.
A belief in white righteousness quietened the voices of reason and fairness when the first fleet landed on the shores of this continent. And it enabled colonisers and settlers to participate in and/or witness without objection decades of massacres, land and resource theft, rape, cultural genocide and other acts of violence towards First Peoples.
The voice of whiteness is also found in present arguments, like when the violence of settlement is justified by what the British introduced. It is white superiority to insist science, language, religion, law and social structures of an invading force are benevolent gifts.
First Peoples already had functioning, sophisticated social structures, law, spiritual beliefs, science and technology. Combining eons of their own advances in science with long standing trade relations with Muslim neighbours, First Peoples were already on an enviable trajectory.
Tales of white benevolence, whether real or imagined, will not obliterate stories of what was stolen or lost. Social structures implanted by the new arrivals were not beneficial for First Peoples, who were barred from economic participation and denied genuine access to education, health and justice until approximately the 1970s.
Due to systemic racism, power and privilege, and social determinants, these introduced systems of justice, education and health still have entrenched access and equity barriers for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Changing the nation involves settler colonialists being more aware of the history of invasion and brutal settlement, as well as the continuing impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It involves an active commitment to reform, which includes paying the rent.
The frontier wars did not result in victory for settler colonialists, because the fight is not over. The sovereignty of approximately 600 distinctly different cultural/language groups was never ceded. Despite generations of violence and interference from settler colonialists, First Peoples have not been defeated.
“You came here only recently, and you took our land away from us by force. You have almost exterminated our people, but there are enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claim, as white Australians, to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humane nation.”
‘Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights!: A Statement of the Case for the Aborigines Progressive Associations’, The Publicist, 1938, p.3
Having lived on this continent for close to 80,000 years and surviving the violence of colonisation and ongoing injustices of non-Indigenous settlement, the voices of First Peoples cannot be dismissed. The fight for rights is not over.
The date will change. And, although it will take longer, the nation will change. There are enough still standing to lead this change – so all Australians can finally access the freedoms, equality and justice that Australia so proudly espouses.
Karen Wyld is an author, living by the coast in South Australia
Is it time to curb immigration in Australia?
To curb or not to curb immigration? It’s one of the more polarising questions Australia grapples with amid anxieties over a growing population and its impact on the infrastructure of cities.
Over the past decade, Australia’s population has grown by 2.5 million people. Just last year, it increased by almost 400,000, and the majority – about 61 percent net growth – were immigrants.
Different studies reveal vastly different attitudes.
While Australians have become progressively more concerned about a growing population, they still see the benefits of immigration, according to two different surveys.
Times are changing
In a new survey recently conducted by the Australian National University, only 30 percent of Australians – compared to 45 percent in 2010 – are in favour of population growth.
The 15 percent drop over the past decade is credited to concerns about congested and overcrowded cities, and an expensive and out-of-reach housing market.
Nearly 90 percent believed population growth should be parked because of the high price of housing, and 85 percent believed cities were far too congested and overcrowded. Pressure on the natural environment was also a concern.
But a Scanlon Foundation survey has revealed that despite alarm over population growth, the majority of Australians still appreciate the benefits of immigration.
In support of immigration
In the Mapping Social Cohesion survey from 2018, 80 percent believed “immigrants are generally good for Australia’s economy”.
Similarly, 82 percent of Australians saw immigration as beneficial to “bringing new ideas and cultures”.
The Centre for Independent Studies’ own polling has shown Australians who responded supported curbing immigration, at least until “key infrastructure has caught up”.
In polling by the Lowy Institute last year, 54 percent of respondents had anti-immigration sentiments. The result reflected a 14 percent rise compared to the previous year.
Respondents believed the “total number of migrants coming to Australia each year” was too high, and there were concerns over how immigration could be affecting Australia’s national identity.
While 54 percent believed “Australia’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation”, trailing behind at 41 percent, Australians said “if [the nation is] too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation”.
Next steps?
The question that remains is what will Australia do about it?
The Coalition government under Scott Morrison recently proposed to cap immigration to 190,000 immigrants per year. Whether such a proposition is the right course of action, and will placate anxieties over population growth, remains to be seen.
Join us
We’ll be debating IQ2: Immigration on March 26th at Sydney Town Hall, for the full line-up and ticket info click here.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Limiting immigration into Australia is doomed to fail
Few topics bridge the ever widening divide between both sides of politics quite like the need to manage population growth.
Whether it’s immigration or environmental sustainability, fiscal responsibility or social justice. That the global population breached 7.5 billion in 2017 has everyone concerned.
We are at the point where the sheer volume of people will start to put every system we rely on under very serious stress.
This is the key idea motivating the centrist political party Sustainable Australia. Led by William Bourke and joined by Dick Smith, the party advocates for a non-discriminatory annual immigration cap at 70,000 persons, down from the current figure of around 200,000 – aimed at a “better, not bigger” Australia.
Join the first IQ2 debate for 2019, “Curb Immigration”. Sydney Town Hall, 26 March. Tickets here.
While the party has been accused of xenophobic bigotry for this stance, their policy makes clear they are not concerned about an immigrant’s religion, culture, or race. Their concern is exclusively for the stress greater numbers of migrants will place on Australia’s infrastructure and environment.
It is a compelling argument. After all, what is the point of the state if not to protect the interests of its citizens?
A Looming Problem
We should be concerned with the needs and interests of our international neighbours, but such concerns must surely be strictly secondary to our own. When our nearest neighbour has approximately ten times our population, squeezed into a landmass twenty five per cent Australia’s size, and ranks 113 places behind us in the Human Development Index, one can be forgiven for believing that limited immigration is critical for ongoing Australian quality of life.
This stance is further bolstered by the highly isolated, and therefore vulnerable nature of Australia’s ecosystem. Australia has the fourth highest level of animal species extinction in the world, with 106 listed as Critically Endangered and significantly more as Endangered or Under Threat.
Much of this is due to habitat loss from human encroachment as suburbs and agricultural lands expand for our increasing needs. The introduction of foreign flora and fauna can be absolutely devastating to these species, greatly facilitated by increased movement between neighbour nations (hence the virtually unparalleled ferocity of our quarantine standards).
While the nation may be a considerable exporter of foodstuffs, many argue Australia is already well over its carrying capacity. Any additional production will be degrading the land and our ability to continue growing food into the future.
The combination of ecological threats and socio-economic pressure makes the argument for limiting immigration to sustainable numbers a powerful one.
But it is absolutely doomed to failure.
Fortress Australia
If the objective of limiting immigration to Australia is both to protect our environment and maintain high quality of life, “Fortress Australia” will fail on both fronts. Why?
Because it does nothing to address the fundamental problem at hand. Unsustainable population growth in a world of limited resources.
Immigration controls may indeed protect both the Australian quality of life and its environment for a time, but without effective strategic intervention, the population burden in neighbouring countries will only continue to grow.
As conditions worsen and resources dwindle, exacerbated by the impacts of anthropogenic climate change, citizens of those overpopulated nations will seek an alternative. What could be more appealing than the enormous, low-density nation with incredibly high quality of life, right next door to them?
If a mere 10 percent of Indonesians (the vast majority of which live on the coast and are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change impacts) decided to attempt the crossing to Australia, we would be confronted by a flotilla equivalent to our entire national population.
The Dilemma
At this point we have one of two choices: suffer through the impact of over a decade’s worth of immigration in one go or commit military action against twenty-five million human beings. Such a choice is a Utilitarian nightmare, an impossible choice between terrible options, with the best possible result still involving massive and sustained suffering for all involved. While ethics can provide us with the tools to make such apocalyptic decisions, the best response by far is to prevent such choices from emerging at all.
Population growth is a real and tangible threat to the quality of life for all human beings on the planet, and like all great strategic threats, can only be solved by proactively engaging in its entirety – not just its symptoms.
Significant progress has been made thus far through programs that promote contraception and female reproductive rights. There is a strong correlation between nations with lower income inequality and population growth, indicating that economic equity can also contribute towards the stabilisation of population growth. This is illustrated by the decreasing fertility rates in most developed nations like Australia, the UK and particularly Japan.
Cause and Effect
The addressing of aggravating factors such as climate change – a problem overwhelmingly caused by developed nations such as Australia, both historically and currently through our export of brown coal– and continued good-faith collaboration with these developing nations to establish renewable energy production, will greatly assist to prevent a crisis occurring.
When concepts such as immigration limitations seek to protect our nation by addressing the symptoms, we are better served by asking how the problem can be solved from its root.
Gordon Young is an ethicist, principal of Ethilogical Consulting and lecturer in professional ethics at RMIT University’s School of Design.
BY Gordon Young
Gordon Young is a lecturer on professional ethics at RMIT University and principal at Ethilogical Consulting.
Adoption without parental consent: kidnapping or putting children first?
Adoption without parental consent: kidnapping or putting children first?
Australia’s two biggest states are moving in opposite directions when it comes to adoption. While New South Wales is accused of tearing families apart, is Victoria right to deny children a voice?
A new stolen generation is coming to you soon.
Or so you would think if you read the reaction to recent NSW reforms aimed at making adoption easier.
NSW Parliament has passed new laws placing a two year time limit on a child staying in foster care. After this time, the state can pursue adoption if a child can’t safely return home, even if birth parents don’t agree.
Critical articles across media raised the spectre of another stolen generation.
An open letter signed by 60 community groups said the NSW Government was “on a dangerous path to ruining lives and tearing families apart”. Indigenous writer Nayuka Gorrie tweeted, “Adoption without parental consent is kidnapping”.
But should a parent really have the right to block the adoption of the child they neglected?
Laws prohibit journalists from identifying people involved in child protection cases so media coverage rarely includes the views of children, even after they turn 18. The laws exist to protect vulnerable minors, but such voices could add some balance to the debate and explain why NSW is ahead in putting children first.
Foster care crisis
Out-of-home care adoption – where legal parenting rights are transferred from birth parents to foster parents – is extremely rare in Australia. Last year, there were 147 children foster care adoptions. That’s a tiny fraction of the 47,000 Australian children living in out-of-home care.
Previously, kids could be placed in state care simply because they were born to a single mother or an Aboriginal woman.
These days, child protection workers only remove children if their lives are in danger due to repeated abuse or neglect.
While foster care is supposed to be a temporary arrangement, children on average spend 12 years in care, often bouncing from one temporary home to another.
It’s no surprise more than a third of foster children end up homeless soon after leaving care.
Permanent care instead of adoption
While NSW is trying to make adoption easier, Victoria is not. None of the more than 10,000 children in Victorian state care were adopted last year.
Victorian children who can’t return home are placed in ‘permanent care’, where they remain a ward of the state but are housed by the same foster carers until age 18.
Paul McDonald, CEO of Anglicare Victoria, describes permanent care as a “win-win-win” for children, birth parents and foster carers. He argues it provides stability for children without changing their legal status “so dramatically”.
Ignoring children’s voices
Former AFL player Brad Murphy, who grew up in Victorian permanent care, begs to differ. “From a child’s perspective, you don’t always feel secure in permanent care,” he said. “I longed for adoption. I wanted to belong to my foster parents, I wanted the same surname.”
Victoria didn’t allow him to be adopted by his loving foster carers because his birth father wouldn’t provide consent.
Murphy believes the Victoria Government should give children a say. “When I was 3 years old, I was calling my foster carer ‘Mum’, as I do now at age 33. I always knew what I wanted”.
The other problem with denying children an adoption choice is they continue to belong to the state. “Government were making all the decisions in my life. And like everything with government, it’s never done quickly,” Murphy said.
He often missed out on school camps and excursions because bureaucrats didn’t sign off permission.
Brad was placed in foster care at 16 months of age. Soon after, his mother ‘did a runner’ to Western Australia. His father was in jail for most of his childhood.
“I was never going back to my birth parents. If birth parents don’t make any effort to change their ways, why should the child suffer any longer?”
Case for reform
There are other parents, though, who want to change their ways but support is scarce. Housing, counselling and rehab facilities across Australia are lacking for low income families.
Some argue we should devote more resources toward keeping vulnerable families together, rather than promoting adoption reform.
There is no reason why we can’t do both. Help families where change is possible, but give children a choice when it’s not.
Though separating children from birth parents can prove traumatic, so is constant abuse. Some kids are terrified of their parents and want stability and the feeling of belonging with their new family.
In NSW, caseworkers must ask children what they want, if they’re old enough to understand. Prospective adoptive parents must educate kids about their history and culture. Birth parents can remain connected to children when it’s safe and in the child’s interests.
Overseas studies show adopted children have better life outcomes than those who remain in long term foster care.
Adoption won’t work for everyone, but it could benefit many kids.
Those criticising NSW reforms should also ask the Victorian government why it continues to deny children the basic human right to be heard.
Are you facing an ethical dilemma? We can help make things easier. Our Ethi-call service is a free national helpline available to everyone. Operating for over 25 years, and delivered by highly trained counsellors, Ethi-call is the only service of its kind in the world. Book your appointment here.
Oliver Jacques is a freelance journalist and writer.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Oliver Jacques
Oliver Jacques is a freelance writer and tutor based in Griffith, NSW. His writing has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, ABC, SBS, Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Eureaka Street and The Shovel. He has a Masters Degree in Public Policy at ANU; a graduate certificate in journalism at UTS; and has completed courses in copywriting and search engine optimisation at the Australian Writers Centre.
Ethics programs work in practise
New research released today reveals that organisations with clear ethics programs are more likely to be seen as responsible in their business practises by their employees.
The new survey, undertaken by The Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) in partnership with our team at The Ethics Centre (TEC) found that the majority of Australian employees are aware that their organisations have each of the building blocks of an ethics program; a code of ethics, training, and a ‘speak up’ line.
“Ethics at Work” was launched to The Ethics Alliance members this morning through an intimate panel discussion that explored the implications of the findings, featuring Philippa Foster Back of IBE, John Neil and Cris Parker of TEC and Jill Reich of Uniting.
The survey reveals that awareness of ethics programs positively impact how employees feel their company deals with stakeholders. Those with an ethics program are significantly more likely to feel that their organisation acts responsibly in business dealings, at 84 percent. This compares to less than half of those without an ethics program (49 percent). There was one counter-intuitive result where 42 percent agreed their line manager rewards employees who get good results even if it’s through questionable practises.
We’ve spent the last 30 years working with individual organisations to establish ethical frameworks, and worked with many major organisations in recovery from ethical failure. The impact of clear lived values and principles at all levels of an organisation is tremendous, and instrumental to a positive, supportive culture.
The survey also illuminated the role managers play in upholding behaviours within the workplace. Managers were more likely than non-managers to view their organisation positively, both in engagement with stakeholders (77 percent vs 71 percent), and in application of social policy (75 percent vs 67 percent).
It further identifies pressures felt and attitudes toward management positions:
- Managers are more likely to feel pressure to compromise their ethical standards than those not in a management position (by nine percent)
- They were also much more likely to have lenient views toward charging personal entertainment as expenses and using company petrol for mileage
- Employees who have felt pressure to compromise their ethical standards were also more likely to feel their manager failed to promote/reward ethical behaviour (43 percent).
At an employee level, almost one in four reported awareness of misconduct in the workplace, yet worryingly only one in three of those workers decided to speak up.
Of those who have experienced misconduct at work, the most common types were bullying and harassment (41 percent), inappropriate or unethical treatment of people (39 percent) and misreporting of working hours (32 percent).
In addition, more than one in ten (13 percent) have felt pressured to compromise their ethical standards in the workplace.
The Ethics Centre, and our membership program The Ethics Alliance are committed to raising the ethical standards of business in Australia. To find out more about our work visit www.ethics.org.au
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
BY ethics
'Vice' movie is a wake up call for democracy
America has sold a unique brand of exceptionalism.
Some say no modern nation surpasses its military, economic, scientific and cultural prowess. Prominent Americans revere their country as an “empire of liberty”, a “shining city on a hill”, the “last best hope on Earth,” and the “leader of the free world”.
These enduring paeans are an apparent result of America’s political philosophy. By privileging individual freedom for every citizen, the American finds themselves in a unique position all of the time: whenever they choose to do something, they exercise a political right.
This choice has come to be sacred. Vice is about the lengths a self-proclaimed patriot will go to protect it.
When director Adam McKay’s film The Big Short earned him an Oscar for screenwriting, audiences discovered the former SNL comic’s hidden skill – turning concepts that usually made people feel bored or stupid, engaging and funny.
It’s our luck that after the tenth anniversary of 2008 financial crisis, and one month after George H. W. Bush’s funeral, his next target of irreverence would be the shadowy figure of Dick Cheney.
Far from a hagiography, Vice – carried seamlessly by an unrecognisable lead in Christian Bale and a cuttingly ambitious Amy Adams as his wife Lynne – seems an unambiguous condemnation of the Bush-Cheney administration, an ancestor of today’s American right.
This is no typical biopic.
There are no sweeping landscapes and sombre confessionals in red-curtained studios, nor any attempt to feign journalistic objectivity. No off-screen interviewer neatly ties the narrative together and the fourth wall is broken in the first ten minutes.
Absurdity, characters addressing the viewer directly, and thick visual metaphors give Viceits unique personality (wait till you see the scene with the heart). McKay wants you to know he is speaking directly to you. This isn’t a squared off paragraph confined to history books. It is what shaped our present.
Make no mistake: just because it’s opinionated doesn’t mean it isn’t well researched. McKay told the New York Times that the movie encompassed “five decades of Cheney’s life, 200 locations and more than 150 speaking parts”. According to him, a more measured, less confrontational tone wouldn’t have suited the OTT political circus we live in now. “Why be subtle anymore?”
While a conservative backlash is to be expected, this Cheney is no bloodless monster. He’s human. An idealist. His tender love for his daughters and unquestioning devotion to his wife are the same qualities that bond him to the bawdy Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), and the ranks of a post-Watergate GOP.
He’s a creature of a slower, sweeter time: honed by long scenes of fly-fishing and the vast plains of Wyoming. McKay contrasts this with the energetic, M&M crunching Bush, played by a chameleon-like Sam Rockwell.
Cheney watches and waits. And watches and waits. He leaves no trace. And he is in it for the long haul.
At its core, Vice is a story about democracy. It is a warning that the halls of power rarely grant wishes without demanding a sacrifice, and too often this sacrifice begins with stripping the humanity of the powerless. It is about the special accomplishment of the individual who advances into public life when retreating into privacy is the easiest and most natural thing to do.
It is an admission that envy, chronic discontent and loneliness are intrinsic to democracy, but that its expansive collectivism are how to combat it. It’s all of this, and a demand to keep paying attention.
In his letters, Alexis de Tocqueville speaks of his ambition “to point out if possible to men what to do to escape tyranny and debasement in becoming democratic.”
Philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre offers the following:
“He [Tocqueville] seems to say that tyranny and debasement are part and parcel of becoming democratic. But… [it] works the other way around as well: that in becoming democratic – that is, in becoming properly democratic, democratic in the right way – we can hope to escape the new kinds of tyranny and debasement that democracy brings about…
For as Tocqueville exhorts himself in an unpublished note, we must “use Democracy to moderate Democracy. It is the only path open to salvation to us.”
McKay, and Cheney, would agree.
Vice is released in movie theatres 26 December 2018.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY Aisyah Shah Idil
Aisyah Shah Idil is a writer with a background in experimental poetry. After completing an undergraduate degree in cultural studies, she travelled overseas to study human rights and theology. A former producer at The Ethics Centre, Aisyah is currently a digital content producer with the LMA.
The Ethics Centre: A look back on the highlights of 2018
Sometimes, good people do bad things. The last year confirmed this. Banks, schools, universities, the military, religious institutions – it seems 2018 left no sector unshaken.
These are the sorts of issues we confront every day at The Ethics Centre. In our reviews and confidential advice we have seen similar patterns repeat over and over again.
Yes, bad apples may exist, but we find ethical issues arise from bad cultures. And even our most trusted institutions, perhaps unwittingly, foster bad behaviour.
That’s why we have an important job. With your support we help society understand why ethical failures happen and provide safeguards lest they repeat.
As The Ethics Centre approaches its 30th birthday, we’d love to say we’re no longer needed. We hoped to bring ethics to the centre of everyday life and think we’ve made a small dent into that task. But there’s no point pretending there’s not a long way to go.
We thank you for supporting us and believing in us and are proud to share the highlights of another busy year with you.
If you’re short on time to read the full report now (and we’d really love you to take a look some time at what a small organisation like ours can achieve), here are seven highlights we’re particularly proud of:
• We launched The Ethics Alliance. A community of organisations unified by the desire to lead, inspire and shape the future of how we do business. In one year, 37 companies have benefited from the innovative tools that help staff at all levels make better decisions.
• We published a paper on public trust and the legitimacy of our institutions. Our conversations with regulators, investors, business leaders and community groups, revealed a sharp decline in the trust of our major institutions. We identify the agenda they need to in order to maintain public trust and contribute meaningfully to the common good.
• We ramped up Ethi-call. Calls to our free, independent, national helpline increased by 74 per cent this year. That’s even more people to benefit from impartial, private guidance from our highly trained ethical counsellors.
• We reviewed the culture of Australian cricket. When the ball-tampering scandal hit the world stage, Cricket Australia asked us to investigate. We uncovered a culture of ambition, arrogance, and control, where “winning at all costs” indicted administrators and players alike.
•We released a guide to designing ethical tech. Technology is transforming the way we experience reality. The need to make sure we don’t sacrifice ethics for growth is more pressing than ever. We propose eight principles to guide the development of all new technologies before they hit the market. You can download it here.
•We redesigned the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. FODI was created to facilitate courageous public conversation. The Ethics Centre and UNSW’s Centre for Ideas collaborated to untether the festival and produce a bold and necessary world-class cultural event. Every session sold out.
• We grew our tenth year of IQ2. We doubled the number of live attendees and tripled the student base showing audiences are more intelligent and hungry for diverse ideas than they are often given credit for. We welcomed a new sponsor Australian Ethical whose values align with our own. There’s never been a better time to support smart, civic, public debate.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
