Where do you start?

It is not surprising that Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Human Rights Commission, gave a thoughtful, though provoking provocateur’s address at the Sydney Salon last night (22^nd August 2016).  It is a little more surprising that she laid the blame for Australia’s recent performance on human rights issues at least partially at the feet of the Australian courts.  However, coming from such an eminent jurist, it is hard to ignore her criticism.  She cited the recent decision in the High Court of New Guinea which effectively outlawed the Manus Island detention centre on the grounds that it breached the right to personal liberty in the PNG constitution. By comparison, the Australian High Court found the existing framework of third country detention centres to be legally and constitutionally valid.  She cited a further comparison between the USA Supreme Court ruling in 2015 which legalised same sex marriage, and the lack of any similar rulings locally.

The reason for these discrepancies is, of course, the lack of a guarantee of basic human rights in the Australian Constitution. Triggs examined why this is so, and more importantly, why it has not changed.  She concluded that there was a strong suspicion of judge made law in Australia.  Suspicion by the general public is understandable. After all, the normal citizen most often meets judges in the minor courts defending drink driving charges. However there is suspicion by the political classes in general.  In this connection, she cited Bob Carr whose vocal opposition to a Bill of Rights in 2009 put paid to Frank Brennan’s efforts to bring this legal instrument to life.  She noted the practical and legal objections to a Bill of Rights, but also observed that the New Zealand Bill of Rights which was enacted in 1990 has not had the dire outcomes that were predicted by Carr and others.  Politicians, of course, see the ability of Judges and courts to overturn their laws as an unjustified curtailment of their power.  Anyone with even a few years of high school history under the belt, will know that curtailment of executive power is exactly what is intended by the doctrine of the separation of powers which gives courts the right to review laws.  It is the foundation of representative democracy, unfortunately crumbling in the Australian context.  The transformation of parliament into a rubber stamp for the ruling party is a further demolition of the basic checks and balances in the system.

The outcome of this situation is that Australia is increasingly held in contempt in international forums for its treatment of first peoples, for its policy on asylum seekers and, surprisingly, the extent of domestic violence.  Most of the international conventions covering these issues, while often based on major Australian contributions, have never been adopted under Australian law.  No one seems to know, few seem to care.

The dog whistle here is racism.  The founding fathers were unwilling to institute a bill of rights into the Australian Constitution as it was seen as an avenue of challenge to the White Australia Policy.  Perhaps it still is.

One of the more depressing points that Professor Triggs shared with the Salon was the result of a survey which illustrated that a large proportion of the Australian population did not know that Australia had a constitution, but an overwhelming majority were prepared to rely on rights which flowed from the American constitution “Taking the 5^th”. Perhaps the answer lies in education.  However, education is in the hands of the politicians who insist that Australian Students learn about Kokoda Track and Gallipoli at least five or six times during a standard school education, but they never learn about the critical concept of the separation of powers or, so it seems, the difference between the Australian Constitution and US television programs.

There were, of course, many questions and discussion points raised, but the one I had for her was this.  I am angry about the trashing of Australia’s reputation, I am horrified by the acts carried out by our government in my name, I am mortified by the unleashing of petty (small, not unimportant) racism and vilification.  I am appalled by the treatment of women and the still unconscionable response of a significant part of the police force.  Yet, even as a white privileged male, I feel powerless.  I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know where to start to find out what to do. I only know I want to act.

Professor Triggs response did not immediately provide me with clarity or direction.  In summary she said (my words), this is a democracy, numbers are important. Stand up and be counted.  Speak out wherever possible.

It seemed unsatisfactory, but I realise that the problem is the strength and frequency of the wrong voices.  Sydney Salon is one place where considered and thoughtful voices have a forum.  I hope this post will allow that discussion to continue.

Managing Information - Zotero

Increasingly the information arriving on the desk of business people comes in the form of the PDF document. Whether the document is the latest industry research, a board report, a tender document, the annual accounts of a subsidiary or a myriad of other information, it arrives as the attachment to an email and lives in the jungle that is the personal electronic filing system that emerges from a chaotic or busy workflow. When that document arrives, invited or not, it demands to be consumed, processed, stored, indexed, referenced, analysed and included.

Increasingly, I have become frustrated by these demands.  I find an interesting paper on Risk Management which I would like to use in a future lecture on the subject, but when the time comes I may not even remember I have it. I gather together a pile of research to support a due diligence study into a potential purchase of a port asset, but I find myself buried in folders, subfolders and strange file names. When I do read something relevant and want to use it, I have difficulty tracking it down when it comes to the final report preparation time and I find it time-consuming to include reference to it in my paper.  I read board papers from one of the companies which I serve, but spend hours searching through earlier editions to track the development of an issue.

I have recognised these problems for a long time but never had a useful tool to address.  Last month I found Zotero.

Zotero started life as a reference manager to manage bibliographic data for use by researchers or students in the humanities.  Since its initial release in 2006 by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, it has developed into a repository for pdf files, saved web pages and all types of documents and media including Microsoft Office Documents, photographs, sound files and screen shots.  It allows these files to be grouped into collections, even allowing a single item to be grouped into many different collections.  It supports tags and notes. It can automatically import or find the metadata and related bibliographic information for use in bibliographies or citations. Outlines, annotations and highlights can be captured from a pdf file, and your own notes and documents can be generated and grouped with the other collection items without leaving the software.

These features all support the Humanities student preparing a term paper, but what of the application to the business environment?  Perhaps I can best illustrate by describing the workflow I adopted in preparing a discussion paper on Risk Management.

I started by creating a collection in Zotero, and worked through my computer hard disk adding things to the collection. This collection included the Risk Management Standard and the accompanying Guidelines.  I also added some papers I had downloaded from Sydney University Library, some survey reports prepared by Deloitte over the years, and some of my own lectures and notes.  I searched the internet for some illustrative Creative Commons photographs and clipped them directly to Zotero.  I captured some web pages prepared by the Tasmanian Government and others by Infrastructure Australia for later reading.

I used a Zotero add-in to place copies of all these files onto my iPad for review in GoodReader, and spend my spare time on planes, in airports and the dentists waiting room to mark up and annotate the documents.  They were all waiting for me in Zotero when I next sat down to work on the paper and I quickly imported all the markups and notes to form the basis of my writing task.  I could use Zotero to go straight to the source of the markup and reread the section or the whole report if necessary, and I could create a reference list and citations from the best sources I found.

This only touches the surface of how useful the program has become to me. It is hard to overestimate the value of collecting all relevant information together in one place, carefully referenced and ready for review.  One particular strength of this feature is that when I prepare regular reports, say monthly or quarterly, I have the full documentation of the previous report at my fingertips.  I am also starting to compile my reference material on a few key subject areas into a reference collection in Zotero, including notes and resources.

The hardest thing about the information age is finding the needle in the haystack, Zotero arranges the haystack.  Most importantly it is free!

 Here.

 Have a look at it and let me know how you use it.

Salon Returns to French Roots

The Sydney Salon emerged from the concept of the Salons of the Paris Enlightment where discussion was seeded by speakers and moved in the direction the audience chose to take it.  So it was fitting that the most recent event was held at the Grand Café in the Alliance Française. The guest speaker this time was H.E. Christophe Lecourtier, Ambassador of France to Australia, and he was ably balanced by Dr Adam Possamai, Professor of Sociology at Western Sydney University who grew up in Belgium.  The topic chosen was The New French Culture - Meeting Tomorrow's Challenges, but it was the challenges of today which cast a shadow over the meeting.  It had been less than two weeks after the Nice Truck Attack of 14th July, 2016.

The ambassador took us on a walk through French history and in doing so he made the point that France as a nation had been formed by different groups coming together around a philosophical view of the rights of man. It was not always easy.  There was the 800 year long Royal project to bring together a range of disparate peoples under one King. There was a revolution, Napoleon and his excursion into Europe, and several revolutions and restorations over the following century. It then took several attempts to establish a republic, only to see its very basis shattered by the First World War.  The confidence did not come back into the French psychè until after the establishment of the EU.  Now France is faced with terrorism, challenges to the EU through Brexit and economic issues flowing from Greece and the challenge to the Euro.

In spite of these challenges, the overall message from the Ambassador was optimistic.  Throughout history, France has been able to bring groups together, work out how to live and prosper and find unity in division.  It may take some time, but it is not impossible that it will happen again.

Possamai gave a different view. He noted in a short speech that his Italian family had lived for four generations in Belgium, but he was still considered an immigrant.  By contrast, whenever he applies for a re-entry visa to Australia, where he now lives, he is invited to become a citizen.  Belgium is not France and Australian immigration officials don't necessarily make everyone welcome, but the point about integration was well made.

As is always the case, it took me until 4am the next day to articulate the question that was troubling me.  After watching the SBS series on Versailles, it is hard to avoid the impression that the eight century long royal project was based on violence.  It also met a violent end, for although the revolution was based on noble philosophies, it ended in a reign of terror. Napoleon continued the tradition, as did the later republics in 1871, although not as successfully.  Modern France thought nothing of exploding nuclear bombs in the pacific and sabotaging the Rainbow Warrior.  France was keen to involve itself in the Arab Conflicts and has made several incursions into former colonies to put down rebellions even as far away as New Caledonia in 1988.

In addition, the French enthusiasm for export of arms to many of the world conflict zones (for example Mirage Jet fighters to the South African Apartheid regime in the 1970s) continues unabated.

A different view of the current troubles is that perhaps France is reaping what it has, for so long, sown.

Sydney Salon, in the meantime, maintains its provocative edge.