As part Conscious Flux’s ongoing efforts toward social responsibility, we’ve been out and about participating in some community forums of late. Read on to find out about what we had to say and what we learned.
The National Human Rights Consultation, according to the Australian Government’s website, ‘provides the opportunity for you to share your views on human rights.’ On April 14th 2009, we attended one of the Round Table Discussion Groups in Melbourne and have since started preparing our submission for the independent committee which is responsible for advising the government.
During the two hour session we had the opportunity to voice our concerns and suggestions for a National Human Rights Bill, as well as hear the concerns of other community members.
Our Suggestion – The Right to Communicate:
Here at Conscious Flux, we have a strong feeling that everything’s going to be ok. The earth will be fine and the human race is going to prosper long into the future, as long as we safeguard and protect one thing: the ability for the world’s people to freely communicate with each other.
The human race currently has the ability to pour all of our collective knowledge into one commonly accessible source, for the first time in human history. In fact, since the inception of the internet there has been a worldwide explosion of free speech, the likes of which hasn’t happened since the early days of radio (before the bandwidth became limited almost exclusively to commercial entities). In our opinion, as long our ability to publish and access information remains uninhibited, i.e. without it being filtered through commercial or government gatekeepers, truth will continue to rise to the surface and help us build a better human society.
Our main objective at the Round Table Discussion was to raise the prospect of introducing something like what is expressed in the Adbusters Magazine ‘Right to Communicate‘ Campaign, which essentially strives to allow the democratic participation of all citizens in the mass media.
Here are some excerpts from the Adbusters ‘Right to Communicate’ Campaign Media Carta, which articulates a lot of what we’re hoping for:
- ‘What we ultimately seek is a new human right for our information age, one that empowers freedom of speech with the right to access the media. This new human right is: The Right To Communicate. We hereby launch a movement to enshrine The Right To Communicate in the constitutions of all free nations, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’
- ‘…we demand the right to buy radio and television airtime under the same rules and conditions as advertising agencies. We ask our media regulators to set aside two minutes of every broadcast hour for citizen-produced messages.’
This campaign also includes other points including demands toward the decentralisation of media ownership.
Why is The Right to Communicate important to Australians?
An excellent example of why this particular right is so important to us in Australia is an incident which occurred in 2008. Getup.org.au, an independent, grass-roots community advocacy organisation, managed to scrape together enough money from their membership to produce and air a thirty second television commercial following the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. With payment made and booking confirmed, the Seven Network pulled out at the last minute. There was an immediate public backlash against this perceived self censorship, however there was technically no legal avenue for the people to demand that their voice be heard. A detailed account of this incident can be found on ABC’s Media Watch.
I personally found this extremely concerning, that in a democratic society, citizens were unable to have access to the media to express themselves politically. It raised the very serious question as to whether private corporations, who don’t necessarily have the community as their primary concern, should be the only ones (aside from political parties funded by private corporations) able to use television to influence the masses.
When given the opportunity I did in fact voice to the room at the Human Rights Round Table Discussion, that my biggest concern was free speech on the internet. I expressed that without the ability to freely share information online, none of us would be able to effectively research and communicate our concerns regarding all of the causes that we each care about as individuals. Obviously my suggested solution was some kind of Right to Communicate.
What other people had to say:
During the day, by far the most interesting aspect was listening to the concerns of other community members. Some of the concerns that stick out in our minds include the following:
- Some suggested a right to accurate information about our food, i.e food labelling, origins and content of genetically modified materials.
- Others suggested creating a link between human rights and environmental protection in order to gaurantee that future generations can enjoy the natural environment the way past generations have. There were also quite specific concerns about our ability to access clean water and clean air, especially considering the new potential for their privatisation through privately owned desalination plants and the new carbon trading program. (Since attending, Bronya has discovered that there is a campaign from the Environmental Defenders Office to include environmental rights within this new Australian human rights charter.)
- The person who aligned most closely with our opinions was a woman called Glenys Stradijot, the Campaign Manager for Friends of the ABC Victoria. Glenys took the time to raise concerns about (and I am now paraphrasing from memory) media monopolisation and the erosion of editorial independence in non-commercial broadcasting.
- A very large issue that came up time and time again was the idea of corporate responsibility and the fact that this legislation didn’t appear to include corporations within it’s scope.
Learning this fact made the entire community consultation process seem like an exercise in futility. If corporations were exempt from having to take responsibility for any harm they might cause to the community then the entire act seemed like a waste of time. (For a better understanding of how important corporate responsibility is visit www.storyofstuff.com.)
- One of the major concerns about the legislation itself and the actual round table discussions was the wording in the documentation and opening address. They contained such phrases as ‘Human Rights (and corresponding responsibilities)’. This itself wouldn’t be a problem if the community was adequately consulted about the responsibilities they feel they should take on in exchange for certain inalienable rights, however the discussion only touched on ‘responsibilities’ when people were asking why no-one had mentioned it. Concerns were then raised that this legislation might be used to slip through a whole set of unknown responsibilities, that Australians would then be required to adhere to by law, which were barely glanced over in the public discussion.
Last of all I was left with a further sense of doubt about the process, as there didn’t seem to ever be any direct reference to including any new human rights in this legislation. It seemed that at every turn the public was being asked which rights (that are already protected, buried in legislation all over the place) should be included in a new easy-to-teach-to-kids format. As stated earlier, my main concern was to raise the idea of a new right to communicate and I walked away unsure as to whether it would ever qualify for consideration. Over the course of the day I also became increasingly fond of the idea of adding new environmental protection rights. Sadly, the appropriate representative wasn’t present and this question was left unanswered.
What next?
Answering the above questions is the very next stage of our research, as well as looking into the potential for using this bill to re-implement and permanently secure some of the rights we lost when much of the anti-terror legislation was rushed through parliament, post 9/11.
We also recently attended a seminar at ACMI, hosted by online independent news outlet, NewMatilda.com. ‘The Tangled Web: Beyond An Internet Filter’ was about the Australian Government’s attempt to introduce ‘Clean feed’ internet filtering technology. At this forum, I took the opportunity to mention the National Human Rights Consultation and the idea of proposing a ‘Right to Communicate’ which would potentially make the entire ‘Clean Feed’ argument completely void. More info about this evening will be found in the Conscious Flux blog: New Matilda’s ‘The Tangled Web: Beyond An Internet Filter’ Forum. In the meantime you can also check out New Matilda’s wrap up of the event here.
Overall, we’re very excited about the fact that the public has an open invitation to have its voice heard. Regardless of what the government is expecting to hear, I’m confident that the people will make their true opinions known. Our next move on this front is to continue with the public submission process which is due on the 15th of June 2009. We’ll keep you posted.
JD.
Tagged: Australia, human rights, melbourne, national human rights consultation, round table discussion group, social responsibility
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