'Nothing about us without us': The Barnett Government and social policy making that excludes end users

photo of Samantha Connor courtesy of ABC

My colleague and friend Samantha Connor is a renowned and fearsome Western Australian disability activist, advocate, writer and campaigner. (You can read about Samantha here and here). Her writings on disability issues on The Stringer are here.)

 

Today she has a letter in the West Australian newspaper in response to a recent story and statement by the Disability Minister Helen Morton who claimed the WA had the best disability system in Australia and that WA's system of providing support and services to people living with disabilities called My Way, was far better than the Federal Government's pilot NDIS system currently being trialled in WA. 

 

Samantha writes:

 

'"It’s unfortunate that Minister Helen Morton and the WA Government has decided that it’s to be ‘My Way or the Highway’ (WA’s own services best for disabled, 2.9.15). Announcing that WA has the best scheme might be in the best interests of both government and providers, but what about people with disability themselves?

 

The evaluation for the two disability schemes, the Commonwealth National Disability Insurance Scheme, and the State based My Way scheme, will not be completed for many months. Preliminary feedback indicates that the jury is still out, with many end users critical of aspects of the State based scheme and others finding the Commonwealth scheme difficult to engage with.

 WA has a regrettable track record of declaring ourselves ‘the best’ when it comes to disability care and support. That flies in the face of the commentary of many people with disability and their families who have found our State system not only lacking, but appalling.'

 

As a disability advocate, a person with a disability and a parent of children with a disability, I ask our State Government to think carefully about making decisions for us and speaking upon our behalf. We understand that this is about your carefully built State systems and your individual interests – but for we people with disability of Western Australia, this is about our lives."

 

As Samantha rightly notes, politicians and State Governments are using the roll out of the NDIS for their own political purposes, as much as they aspire to assist people with disabilities.

The WA Government's is actively using the NDIS to serve its own political and policy agenda. 

The Barnett government presents an idealised picture of a disability system that they claim effectively serves the needs of people living with disabilities, despite evidence to the contrary and is using the opportunities presented by the NDIS to extend its agenda of privatisation and outsourcing of government funded and provided health, social and community services.

 

The Minister has come to rely on West Australian parochialism, spin, overinflated political rhetoric and dismissal of her critics as a way to conceal major policy failures across a number of her portfolio responsibilities, including disability, child protection and children's services, mental health and suicide prevention.

 

The Disability Services Commission, who is fighting to protect and maintain its position of power and influence over WA's disability sector, has also shown itself willing to engage in political manoeuvrings in its support for the Barnett Government's agenda. It released this statement yesterday

 

" Getting additional resources is important, but what the WA State Government is focussed on, is making sure WA gets the best NDIS in the nation - a system that will provide the best supports and services to people with disability, their families and carers. The supports that people with disability need to live good lives in their local communities. The individual packages costs in the Lower South West may be lower than the national average, but this may not be the case when the Cockburn-Kwinana area rolls in.

 The learnings from the two trials of the NDIS in WA will help inform how the NDIS will operate in WA into the future. But, the State Government can’t wait until the trials are over to start the conversation with the Commonwealth about rolling out an NDIS for all people with disability in WA. The Minister for Disability Services wants to start the conversation now. She has been told by many people that WA NDIS My Way works – they like the support provided by My Way Coordinators who know them, their family and their community.

 The Minister wants to make sure we have an NDIS in WA that is local, builds on the best of our current system and includes the additional State and Commonwealth funding required to meet the needs of all people with disability. This is what is most important."

As Samantha rightly points out the people whose lives are directly affected by all this political posturing- people living with disabilities, their families and carers- are actively excluded from these debates and decisions.

Similar comments were made today by Women With Disabilities WA Inc (WWDWA), an organisation run by and for people with disabilities, who released the following statement:

The organisation believes that it is counter to the original principle of self management to have able-bodied professionals and politicians who don’t personally use the services under trial speaking on behalf of people with disabilities.

There is little evidence in any of the articles that promote the WA My Way scheme that the real experts were interviewed - people with disabilities who are actually using the My Way scheme.

Chair of WWDWA Inc, Ms Zeliha Iscel, said: “One of the central tenets of the disability rights movement is “nothing about us without us”. The current WA My Way and National NDIS schemes both fail to embody this principle and therefore are at risk of failing people with disabilities and our families.”

Ms Iscel stressed that the reality of the My Way and NDIS trials is a lot more complex than the current media reports and government spokespeople have made it out to be. She further emphasised, “It is far too early to be making definite statements about which trial is the best for Western Australia.”

Coordinator of WWDWA Inc, Ms Rayna Lamb says there is a risk of people with disabilities being steamrolled into the NDIS My Way scheme because of the WA government's insistence on WA exceptionalism, regardless of what is actually best for people with disabilities.

Women With Disabilities WA Inc strongly urges the media and government spokespeople to go directly to the people with disabilities and those who support us to get real experience and knowledge on how both trials are running so far. Ms Iscel said: “To do anything less is to treat people with disabilities as perpetual children who are not permitted a voice in our own lives. In 2015, this is unacceptable”.

WWDWA Inc is run by women with disabilities and provides systemic advocacy and peer support for women with disabilities. http://wwdwa.org.au/
 

Learning from the pioneering work of Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)

 

Three years after her death in 2012 the work of  Elinor Ostrom remains more relevant than ever for those of us campaigning for alternatives to the contemporary orthodoxy of market fundamentalism and neoliberalism.

 

 Ostrom who was a Professor at Indiana University was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 2009.

Ostrom's work challenged and rebutted fundamental economic beliefs, particularly free market and neo-classical economic paradigms. Ostrom was particularly concerned with  relational aspects of economic activity — the ways in which people interact and negotiate with each other to forge rules and informal social understandings.

Ostrom's early work focused on what she called co-production.

 

Ostrom argued that many public services depend heavily on the contribution of time and effort by the persons who consume these services, i.e. the clients and citizens.

 

Ostrom believed that services rely as much upon the unacknowledged knowledge, assets and efforts of service ‘users’ as the expertise of professional providers. It was the informal understanding of local communities and the on the ground relationships that make services more effective.

Co-production describes the relationship that exist between ‘regular producers’, like health workers, police, and schoolteachers and their ‘clients’ who may be transformed by the services into safer, better educated and/or healthier persons.

Ostrom defined co-production as

 “…the mix of activities that both public service agents and citizens contribute to the provision of public services. The former are involved as professionals, or ‘regular producers’, while ‘citizen production’ is based on voluntary efforts by individuals and groups to enhance the quality and/or quantity of the services they use”

One implication is that privatization of public services and the turning over of services to the market fundamentally transforms the relationship between provider and service user, hampering the development of co-production and democratic governance.

Her later work examined how people and communities collaborate and organize themselves to manage collective shared resources like forests, fisheries and natural and social resources. The research overturned the conventional wisdom about government regulation  and challenged the idea that private ownership of public resources is better and more effective than the public and collective sphere.

Ostrom's work provides clear evidence  that the commons-based traditions of cooperation and communal management of resources is not a violation of basic economic common sense.

Her work undermines political conservatives and mainstream economists who denigrate collectively managed property and government and who argue that only private property and the "free market" can responsibly manage resources.  Her work also directly challenges current ideas that privatization and private ownership and expert management of resources is a more effective strategy than collective and public management

Ostrom advocated a “polycentric” approach to managing shared or common resources involving oversight “at multiple levels with autonomy at each level. She argued that shared management of resources helps to establish rules that “tend to encourage the growth of trust and reciprocity” among people who use and care for a particular commons.

Ostrim argued that key management decisions should be made as close to the scene of events and the people and groups involved as possible. Her work showed that the people most affected by or with a stake in shared or common resources are the ones best able to collaborate to use and manage those shared resources effectively and sustainably.

Her work demonstrates that ordinary people are able to create rules, institutions and systems that ensure the equitable and sustainable management of shared and common resources, what is often called our 'common wealth'.

She demonstrated the importance of shared (collective) rather than expert or private management of resources and knowledge and emphasises the importance of active citizen participation. She cited a comprehensive study of 100 forests in 14 countries that detailed how the involvement of local people in decision making is more important to successfully sustaining healthy forests than who is actually in charge of the forests.

 David Bollier writes of the significance of Ostrom's work:

In the 1970s, economics was quickly veering into a kind of religious fundamentalism. It was a discipline obsessed with “rational individualism,” private property rights and markets even though the universe of meaningful human activity is much broader and complex. Lin Ostrom pioneered a different, more humanistic way of thinking about “the economy” and resource management. She originally focused on property rights and “common-pool resources,” collective resources over which no one has private property rights or exclusive control, such as fishers, grazing lands and groundwater. This work later evolved into a broader study of the commons as a rich, cross-cultural socio-ecological paradigm. Working within the social sciences, Ostrom proceeded to build a new school of thought within the standard economic narrative while extending it in vital ways.

 Ostrom's work also has direct relevance to the current economic and environment crises. She wrote:

"We cannot rely on singular global policies to solve the problem of managing our common resources: the oceans, atmosphere, forests, waterways, and rich diversity of life that combine to create the right conditions for life, including seven billion humans, to thrive.....Success will hinge on developing many overlapping policies to achieve the goals,.......We have a decade to act before the economic cost of current viable solutions becomes too high. Without action, we risk catastrophic and perhaps irreversible changes to our life-support system.”

Articles written in memory of her work are here, here, here and here.

A reading list of her work is here.

The last article she wrote before she died is here

Her last book, published just before her death was titled Working Together: Collective Action, the Commons, and Multiple Methods in Practice, and describes the advantages of using several different research methods to study a problem.

Remembering Ken Sprague (1927-204) and his powerful images

image by Ken Sprague

"In essence, the leitmotif of his work is about power and the abuse of power as well as the resilience of ordinary working people to this abuse... It is an art of engagement – engagement for change."

(John Green, from the Introduction to Ken Sprague – People’s Artist.)

People continue to ask about this powerful image that appears on this site. (It it also continues to appear in its original or modified form elsewhere).

The image is a drawing by Ken Sprague. I have written before here and here about Ken Sprague who I had the privilege to know during the 1980's. You can read more about Ken's life, his work and legacy here

Ken Sprague's remarkable image captures the recent zeitgeist of uprisings and revolts happening around the world, in which ordinary people are standing up and fighting against state and corporate power and political and financial plundering.

Ken's image was created decades ago but reflects his profound and lifelong commitment to  human rights, justice, peace and socialism.

Ken was a renowned artist, cartoonist, illustrator, poster designer , print maker, educator and filmmaker  who believed profoundly that art should  always serve social justice, peace, human rights and political struggle.

 The obituary for Ken was written by John Green and appeared in the Guardian newspaper. John wrote a book on Ken's life titled Ken Sprague: People's Artist.

 Ken Sprague: Radical artist in pursuit of Socialism
By John Green ( from The Guardian 6th August 2004)

 The aim of Ken Sprague, who has died of a stroke aged 77  was, he said, “to build a picture road to socialism, to the Golden City, or as Blake called it, Jerusalem”. A painter, sculptor, muralist, banner-maker and sometime television presenter, Ken was, for half a century a regular, but dissenting cartoonist for the Daily Worker and its successor the Morning Star, and for papers like Tribune and Peace News.

As a posterman his work included material for Martin Luther King, and the women of Greenham Common — and against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia, and Edward Heath’s Industrial Relations Bill. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was designing scenery and backdrops for Unity Theatre and was involved in the Centre 42 trade union arts project.

All round talents
His linocuts for the radical collective Cinema Action’s Kill The Bill film (1971) began an involvement in moving images. I made a film about him in 1972 which led to Jeff Perks’s 1976 BBC Omnibus documentary The Posterman. This led to a series of Channel 4 films, devised with Jeff Perks and presented by Ken, called Everyone A Special Kind Of Artist (1986). There was also a BBC South West series, The Moving Line with Joan Bakewell. In later life, he taught and practised as a  psychodrama specialist. Ken was born in Bournemouth , his father was a train driver and his mother worked in a cardboard box factory. His first work of art, in 1937, was a linocut made from linoleum, torn from the kitchen floor in response to the Spanish civil war.

Early life
He was educated at Alma Road Elementary School — until it was bombed — and Porchester Road Secondary Modern School. There the headmaster, noticing his talent, recommended that he apply to the local art college. He won a scholarship to Bournemouth Municipal  College and, from 13 and a half, studied graphics — in those days students of his background were hardly considered for fine arts courses. One morning in 1944 he volunteered, aged 17 for the Royal Marines — and that afternoon, in Southampton, he joined the Communist Party. After basic military training he was transferred to Vickers-Supermarine as a technical artist, work which took him to wartime Yugoslavia. Postwar, and after a summer stint in a circus, he completed his college diploma course in design and illustration. The CP, he told me, was his university, but after the Bournemouth Daily Echo had labelled him a college revolutionary, local job prospects dwindled. He briefly worked for a volunteer labour battalion in Yugoslavia, was employed  by the Boy Scouts and then, between 1950 to 1954 he worked in a Carlisle mining company design office — doubling as a cartoonist for the local Conservative, and Liberal newspapers. Then came a move to London as the Daily Worker’s publicity manager, which also had him working as a journalist and cartoonist. Devastated by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, in 1959 Ken left to set up, with Ray Barnard, the publicity company, Mountain & Molehill. Yet he continued producing cartoons for the Worker, and its successor the Morning Star into the 21st century.

Mountain & Molehill
M&M — later The Working Arts — was responsible for some of the most innovative trade union campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. Ken told union leaders they had to (TO) use publicity to win hearts and minds and to see it as an integral part of union work. And it was Sprague and Barnard who initiated the sensational 1961 visit to Britain of the first man in space Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. M&M also worked for the Indian High Commission — which led to a meeting with Jawaharlarl Nehru In the late 1960s Ken began editing the Transport and General Workers Union’s the Record, transforming it into a lively newspaper, — and illustrating it with his own cartoons. As a poster and print-maker he worked with a number of leading progressive organisations and individuals, including Pete Seeger.

New life in Devon
In 1971 he moved with his wife, Sheila, a talented potter, to Holwell, a farmhouse in Devon, and converted it into an artistic centre. Sheila died of cancer in 1973, but with his second wife, Marcia he set up the Holwell International Centre For Psychodrama and Sociodrama which continued until 1998. There Ken combined his artistic talents with pedagogic expertise, using them in this new field in which he became a leading practitioner.

It is his posters and prints that will remain his true epitaph. His innovative and prolific creativity, his recalcitrant questioning, determination and belief in others’ potential was an inspiring beacon for everyone who met him, young and old. His images remain etched in the mind, they unsettle, provoke, discomfort but also amuse. Ken was concerned about how politics impact on the ordinary person. In essence the leitmotif of his work is about power and the abuse of power as well as the resilience of ordinary people. He depicted the world as changeable. His work is imbued with unfashionable optimism, depicting a world where ethics and values still have relevance. It is the antithesis of post-modern fragmentation and its disdain of value systems. Every morning, he drew a political cartoon to assuage his anger and frustration at the state of the world. And only a few weeks before he died, he was excitedly telling me about plans for an artistic project in Cuba and a book he was determined to publish of anti-war drawings. He left the Communist Party, after the acrimonious split in 1988. He continued to call himself a communist, however, saying “The party left me, I didn’t leave the party”. He won several prestigious awards, including poster of the year award from the National Council of Industrial Design on two occasions.

He is survived by Marcia, from whom he recently separated, his five children and seven grandchildren.

John Green

Remembering Tienanmen Square June 1989 and the courage of those who defied Chinese tanks

Photograph by Stuart Franklin/Magnum.

The photo on the right was taken from a different vantage point and shows the man in the background preparing to confront the tanks (AP Photo Terril Jones)

Today is the 25th anniversary of the brutal Chinese crackdown in Tienanmen Square.

The iconic image of that event is the photo of a single unidentified man holding two shopping bags who steps in defiance of a line of army tanks heading to Tienanmen Square.

All through the months of April and May 1989 Chinese students and pro-democracy activists protested in Beijing and other parts of the country. The protests were triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang, a liberal reformer, who was deposed after a power struggle with hardliners over the direction of political and economic reform in China.

In early May, the protestors occupied Tienanmen Square and demanded government accountability and greater democratic and press freedom. The students and pro-democracy protesters filled the square for weeks, initiating hunger strikes and other forms of protest activities.

On the nights of the 3rd and 4th June 1989 the Chinese Government enforced martial law. 

Massive troop and tank movements around the square began, concluding in an all-out assault that culminated in retaking Tienanmen Square and surrounding areas. 

Thousands of protesters and citizens heading to join the protest in Tienanmen Square were killed and injured after the People's Liberation Army opened fire on unarmed and peaceful protesters.

this photo shows the same man defying a long line of tanks (by Arthur Tsang)

Riots ensued around the Square and throughout the capital.

The authorities proceeded to carry out mass arrests. Some people were executed and others just disappeared. An estimated 1600 were imprisoned for long periods, and 2 remain in prison 25 years later. Others were politically punished and lost jobs and positions. Many of the student leaders were forced to flee China.

The Tienanmen Square massacre and its aftermath initiated a new era of conservatism in China that continues to this day.

Various slide shows of the 1989 events at Tienanmen Square are here, here and here.

Twenty five years later, the Chinese Government are trying to prevent any mention or discussion of the uprising and the massacres by locking up, charging or harassing artists, scholars, lawyers, bloggers and relatives of victims.

Chinese citizens involved in the uprising and those who try to remember the events of 25 years ago continue to suffer persecution.

Amnesty has recorded the names of Chinese activists targeted by the Chinese authorities in the lead up to the anniversary. This includes scores of detentions and house arrest and people being charged with offences carrying prison terms for holding private memorial gatherings for the dead.

The New York Review of Books has this interview with Hu Jia, who was just 15 at the time he participated in the Tienanmen Square demonstrations. He is currently under house arrest in China over his attempt to organize a commemoration of the massacre protest activities.

The Guardian has this article, featuring interviews with 3 leaders of the 1989 protests who were forced to flee China in 1989.

Everyday heroes: sit-ins 50 years apart show the power of ordinary people to take action against injustice

"You don't have to be a big name to make a difference and impact change. Small things can make ripples that make a big difference"
Joan Trumpauer Mullholland

Today in a Perth court 11 Christian leaders were fined $50 each for trespass after they held a prayer vigil and sit-in at the office of the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as a protest against the plight of 1100 children imprisoned in Australia's onshore and offshore immigration detention camps.

There was some concern that the Christian leaders faced a jail sentence for their protest.

The protest in the Foreign Minister's office was followed by subsequent prayer vigils and sit-in by other Christians and Church leaders on the east coast, this time in the offices of the Immigration Minister, The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.

The Christian leaders are part of a long tradition in which ordinary people use sit-ins as a form of direct action protest against injustice and domination,

This iconic photo was taken on May 28th 1963 in Jackson Mississippi and shows 3 people- 2 white people and one black woman- participating in a sit- in protest at a Woolworths lunch counter. They are surrounded by angry and aggressive white men who are pouring sugar, liquid and ketchup over the 3 protesters.

The protesters were three students- John Salter, Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody- who were protesting against racial segregation of lunch counters in Woolworths stores throughout the American south.

Initially the protesters were jeered and taunted and then doused in sugar and ketchup. They were then beaten and kicked.  

It was one of the most violent attacks on protesters involved in a sit-in the history of the civil rights movement.

The attack went on for 3 hours as the Police stood by and watched

 The Woolworths store manager eventually had to close the store and the protesters were escorted away by Police.

 
The story of the Woolworths sit in, the events that lead up to the protest and the fall out from it (including the murder two weeks later of civil rights leader Medger Evers) and the stories of the protesters involved are told in Mike O'Brien's book We Shall Not Be Moved.

The Jackson sit-in was one of a long line of sit-ins used during the civil rights movement to protest against racial segregation in the South during the early 1960's.

When defending the environment against capitalism gets you killed

Members of the Peasant Unified Movement of Honduras, carry mock coffins bearing pictures of people killed in land conflict clashes. There were 109 activist deaths between 2002-13 in Honduras, making it the world's second deadliest country for communities defending natural resources. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images from the Guardian

Chilling stories on Democracy Now and The Guardian about a report by the group Global Witness which identifies a global surge in the number of environmental activists murdered whilst protecting their land and the environment. Brazil is the world's deadliest country for environmental activists with 448 deaths between 2002 and 2013. 

Activists in Latin America and Asia Pacific are most at risk. 

The report Deadly Environment:The Dramatic Rise in Killings of Environmental and Land Defenders found that the murder of environmental and land rights activists worldwide has tripled over the past decade. The report found that 147 activists were killed in 2012, compared to 51 in 2002. The death rate is now an average of two per week.

Almost none of the killers have faced charges.

The report argues these killings are just the tip of the iceberg and the actual numbers being killed are far greater. Under-reporting and difficulties verifying killings in isolated areas are a significant problem. Reports from many countries- a number of African countries, Zimbabwe and Myanmar- where civil society groups are weak and the regimes are authoritarian, are not included in the count.

The environmental activists are being targeted for killing in a struggle between those trying to protect and conserve the natural environment and the buying power of money. The report points to competition over land and natural resources resulting from industrial logging, mining and land rights as the trigger for the murders.

The vast majority of activists killed are resisting the operations of global corporations, including logging companies, agribusiness corporations and mining and resource corporations.

The Democracy Now story includes an interview with José da Silva, a Brazilian conservationist and environmentalist who campaigned against logging and clearcutting of trees in the Amazon rainforest. In 2011, José and his wife Maria were murdered by masked gunmen. José’s ear was ripped out as proof of execution.

Here is Global Witness campaigner Oliver Courteney

They’re often ordinary people who are resisting these operations. As I’ve said, it’s very difficult often to pinpoint the exact perpetrator. There’s a very startling low number of convictions. But what we have seen is that they are resisting operations to these companies. And we do feel like it’s down to the companies to make sure that they’re not being associated with this kind of violence, and also that governments need to monitor this problem much more clearly and much more actively and protect those citizens who are facing these threats, ensure that any perpetrators are brought to justice.............................................

Mr. Penetra was one of the most striking cases in our report, because we published our first round of research into this issue shortly before the Rio summit, and we tried to issue a wake-up call to the international community to say that we felt that this problem was increasing and that the threat to environmental activists was increasing, just before the—before delegates gathered to discuss better ways to protect the climate and the environment. Now, Mr. Penetra was an advocate for fishermen’s rights who had been fighting for the rights of local fishermen against the—against the advance of oil operations in the area. And now, the day after the summit ended in Rio, Mr. Penetra was abducted, and he was found executed with another campaigner just a few days later. We really think that sends out a symbol about how much needs to be done. He was one of 18 activists who were murdered in the month after Rio, which shows how far we have to go and how much work needs to be done by governments and the international community to make sure that these people who are laying their lives on the line to protect the environment are getting the protection they deserve. 

Are there too many non-profits?

Over on one of my other blogs Radical Ideas on Civil society, the Not for Profit World and Social Justice Activism I have written this piece about the claim that there are too many non profit agencies.

My argument is as follows:

I have never understood the claim that more non profits is a bad thing. In particular, it is fundamentally anti-democratic for someone else to decide which non profits should exist, or to decide that there should be an arbitrary limit on the number of non profits.

Efforts to reduce the number of non profits, ultimately has the effect of reducing the democratic rights of citizens to take action. 

And compare this claim that there are too many non profits, with views about for profit businesses. You never hear the claim that there are too many for profit business, despite the evidence of a huge number of failing, poorly run businesses, engaged in criminal and highly questionable conduct. Rather, the view is that the more for profit businesses there are, the better.

The full piece is here. 

Attacks on the independence of civil society and the voluntary sector

" We are on a slippery slope, where it is becoming increasingly common to hear the view that voluntary organisations should deliver services but not challenge the status quo, especially if they receive government funding. We are already seeing a ‘chilling effect,’ with increasing evidence of self- censorship by voluntary organisations"

Roger Singleton, Chair of the Independence Panel for the UK Voluntary Sector

 The Panel for the Independence of the UK Voluntary sector has just released its 2014 report titled Independence Undervalued: The Voluntary Sector in 2014,  and the picture it paints is despairingly familiar to the situation in Australia. 

The Report shows that the independence of the voluntary sector and civil society is under attack from Governments dedicated to the imposition of market based ideas and policies  :

 "The voluntary sector is losing its ability to protect the most vulnerable in society as a result of government attacks on its campaigning activities, lack of consultation over policy changes, and funding arrangements that put the future of an independent sector at risk"

In its media release the Panel:

• calls on the British Prime Minister David Cameron to take action to stop weakening the independence of the sector and to rebuild trust.  
•  calls on voluntary sector leaders to take a stand to preserve the sector’s independence, which it says is vital to a healthy and compassionate democracy and the reason why so many people lend their support to charities and trust their services.

•  documents numerous instances of a serious and growing threat from the government to Britain’s long tradition of independent voluntary action including:

• Growing criticism by some politicians, including the Secretary of State for Justice, of charities’ role as voices of communities.  There is an increasingly commonly expressed view that charities should simply deliver services and not speak out against injustices – leading to voluntary organisations self-censoring because they are afraid of losing government work, appearing too political or because of gagging clauses in state contracts.
• New and proposed restrictions to the ability of voluntary organisations to challenge government decisions in the courts on behalf of vulnerable individuals.
• Restrictions to campaigning put forward in the Lobbying Bill without consultation and, despite subsequent changes, with continuing concerns about their impact.
• Cuts in government consultation periods, leaving voluntary organisations too little time to respond to important questions, despite assurances this would change.

• "gagging clauses" in contracts for the government’s Work Programme, which prevent preventing subcontractors from criticizing the programme or releasing potentially embarrassing data.

• Damage to support in communities due to loss of public funding for local specialist voluntary organisations as public service contracts concentrate on economies of scale rather than social return.
• Many state-sponsored charities subject to government interference, for example in appointment of board members.
• A weak Charity Commission ill-equipped to maintain public confidence that charities are pursuing an independent mission that is furthering the public good and not state sponsored or driven by private gain; and lack of government compliance with a document signed by David Cameron to protect the independence of the sector, the Compact.

Panel chair Sir Roger Singleton CBE said:

“An independent voluntary sector lies at the heart of a compassionate, democratic society, a role that has become especially important as engagement with mainstream politics declines and the state reduces in size. Yet we are on a ‘slippery slope’, in which the independence of voluntary organisations is increasingly undervalued and under threat and there are insufficient safeguards to protect an independent future for the sector. It is increasingly seen either as a delivery arm of the state or only legitimate where it provides services but does not speak out for wider social change.

 The full 64 page report of the Panel is here

Swiss people take action to cap executive pay and address growing income inequality

The Swiss people are showing that citizens can organize and take action to address growing income inequality by placing restrictions and caps on executive salaries. 

Since the 2008 global financial crises Swiss citizens have set their sights on excessive corporate pay and rising income inequality.

Already public activism by the Swiss people on executive pay has forced two referendums and efforts are underway to force a third referendum. Under Swiss law citizens are able to organize popular initiatives whereby the Swiss Parliament must hold a referendum on any initiative that has gathered more than 100,000 signatures. 

In March 2013 the Swiss voted overwhelmingly to pass some of the strictest controls on executive pay, requiring that public company shareholders vote on compensation for executives.

In November 2013 the Swiss people will get a vote on another proposal to to cap and limit executive pay. The 1:12 initiative will limit executive pay to no more than 12 times the salary of the lowest paid worker. Compare that to the USA which has among the highest levels of income inequality in the world with a CEO to worker pay ratio of 185:1 and here in Australia where the CEO to worker pay ratio is 100:1

Unsurprisingly, corporations and business groups oppose the Swiss  1: 12 initiative claiming that it will abolish prosperity  and is an attack on freedom. Global multinational corporations like GlencoreXstrata  threaten to move their headquarters out of Switzerland if the proposal is passed.

Now Swiss citizens are trying to establish a guaranteed basic income for all citizens. 

On Friday Swiss citizen activists submitted over 130,000 signatures to the Swiss Parliament- enough to call a vote over whether or not to approve the proposal-  to create a law guaranteeing all Swiss nationals a guaranteed basic income of around $2800 per month.  In a public display of support, advocates of the measure tipped over a truck full of 8 million 5-cent coins (one for each citizen of the country.)

Seyla Benhabib on the sigificance of global protests

"Democracy thrives on the interplay of formal representative institutions and the energies of civil society and the voices and noise of the streets."
Seyla Benhabib

For those of us who operate in the spaces of civil society, citizen led social action and social movements, Seyla Benhabib in an interview in Dissent magazine The Gezi Park Protests and the Future of Turkish Politics poses some important questions arising from the wave of global recent protests that swept through Turkey, Brazil, the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe. 

Benhabib explores the implications of the recent protests across Turkey, particularly the protests that took place in Gezi Park in Istanbul.

One of the critical questions posed by Benhabib is whether this global wave of protest can transform itself into some form of organized presence in representative democratic institutions.

These new protests are also the cries of anguish of a new generation who is facing a bleak economic future—at least in Europe and the United States. There is a deep generational anxiety that is galvanizing these protests, with twenty-somethings realizing their prospects may be worse than those of their parents for the first time since the Second World War.

The student movement of 1968 was also global and had spectacular qualities. But principally this movement was guided by varieties of left-wing ideology. There were certain categories through which the world was interpreted, such as imperialism. Today, neoliberal globalization has scrambled our old categories: who are the imperialists? The United States, or China, or Saudi Arabia, all of which are exercising hegemony and regional influence in different ways?

Today’s movements are more diffuse ideologically and programmatically; they cherish politics in the first person more than conceptual abstractions; they are pragmatic and, at their best, they want a deliberative voice and the power to shape the whirling and buzzing vortex of globalization around them. For me, the question for the coming decades will be whether this contentious political energy, which I find so beautiful and hopeful, can translate into some vision of a better future society. There is, at the present, a huge “democratic disconnect” between the street and the parliaments, the public square and the courthouse.
By contrast, the student movement of 1968 took the “long march through the institutions” and produced the political leaders of the next generation, such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Joschka Fischer, and Otto Schilly in Germany; Bernard Kouchner in France; and in the United States, Jesse Jackson, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and even Barack Obama, who in no small measure owes his political orientation to his mother, a child of the sixties. Will this also be the case with your generation? I don’t know.

Mia Pepper on the failed nuclear renaissance in WA

In an important Op Ed piece in the West Australian this week (republished here in the excellent online WA publication The Stringer) anti-nuclear activist and campaigner Mia Pepper of the Conservation Council of WA shines the light on the myths and illusions that have contributed to the failed nuclear renaissance in Western Australia.

The Barnett Government has campaigned hard on its support for a strong uranium industry in WA. Its recent election victory has been praised by the uranium industry lobby, with the Managing Director of Toro Energy claiming that the election result sent a message to the uranium industry that WA is ready and open for business.

But as Mia Pepper points out the risks associated with uranium meeting, particularly the international conditions and the widespread opposition to uranium mining in WA, don't bode well for the industry's prospects in WA

Pepper writes:

Despite the past four years of a pro-uranium government in WA, 42 interested companies, 253 tenements with exploration drilling, and millions of dollars in subsidies, there has not been a single uranium mine approved.

BHP Billiton has sold Yeelirrie WA’s biggest uranium deposit; and dissolved its uranium division.
And the world’s largest uranium miner, Cameco, has put Kintyre, WA’s second biggest uranium deposit, on hold stating that development of the deposit is not economically viable. In early 2013 the company wrote down the value of the Kintyre project by US$168 million, and stated that the uranium price would need to jump from its current low to US$67 lb for the project to break even.

Paladin, a Perth based uranium miner has said the uranium price would need to be even higher at US$85 lb to justify any further investment in the industry, and in February 2013 it wrote down its uranium assets by US$123 million.

Despite this back-pedalling by experienced companies, there is no shortage of uranium hopefuls, like Toro Energy, who remain enthusiastic about the price of uranium recovering, despite the lack of evidence to support their optimism.

Toro Energy, a small company with no mines and no proven experience, is leading the charge with WA’s most advanced uranium proposal – Wiluna – a much smaller deposit than Kintyre or Yeelirrie. As its name suggests, Toro is bullish about pursuing this small deposit despite the shaky economics, the lack of investor interest and fierce public opposition.

There are few grounds to suggest that uranium prices will ever bounce back to the high prices seen in 2007. Long term projections do suggest a more modest recovery, but not to the levels that would make most uranium projects in WA economically viable. The demand for uranium is simply not there.
Uranium is different to other minerals. It pushes moral boundaries, it permanently pollutes country and it contributes to the global nuclear waste problem and proliferation risk. Uranium is unwanted, unnecessary, and uneconomic – altogether a bad way for mining investors to lose money.

Should corporate and business advocates lead NGOs who fight for social justice ?

The  appointment of  Jennifer Westacott, CEO of the Business Council of Australia  as Chair of the Mental Health Council of Australia is further evidence of the trend towards  the "corporate and business takeover" of the not- for- profit sector in Australia.

This "takeover" occurs in many ways and brings the not-for-profit sector closer to the value, agendas and practices of corporate Australia and the business sectors.

One of the many ways this occurs is through the "revolving door" of business and corporate leaders appointed to senior management positions and the Boards of not- for- profit agencies.

The intent of the "takeover" is to harness the not-for-profit and civil society sector (the non- market sectors) so it adopts and serves (and does not challenge) the interests, visions and hegemony of corporate Australia and business interests.

Jennifer Westacott may be eminently qualified and deeply concerned about the mental health of her fellow Australians.

But the Business Council of Australia, the organization she leads, is actively and forcefully pursuing agendas to slash public spending on social security and social spending and promote privatization of public services.

It is hard to see how the CEO of  the Business Council of Australia, a powerful business and corporate lobby group, who argues, advocates and lobbies for policies that are antithetical and hostile to the social justice agenda of the mental health sector could seriously advocate and fight for the interests of the people and stakeholders the Mental Health Council represents and acts on behalf of.

Who can forget the Business Council's campaign to reduce public spending on income support for people with mental health problems struggling to survive on the Disability Support Pension.

As CEO of the Business Council since 2011 Westacott has been an active player in advocating and lobbying to protect and advance the interests of corporate Australia. She is a forceful advocate for what she calls "unleashing the wealth creating parts of the economy"to allow them to pursue endless economic growth.  This requires that social policy become a fundamental plank of, and subservient to economic policy that is  pro-growth, in other words pro-corporate and pro business. 

In the BCA view of the world social policy and the needs of vulnerable and marginalized people are secondary to the interests of  unleashed and unrestrained corporations and business who they claim are the real drivers of economic growth and social prosperity. The BCA and Westacott view is that business and corporations are the ones that really create prosperity and wealth.

Westacott regularly argues the BCA line that it is only by unleashing economic and business growth that social prosperity and the vision of a good society can be achieved. Westacott argues that the Australian mindset and cultural values has to change to support this unleashing of the power of economic growth.

In 2011 Westacott gave the Sambell Oration for the Brotherhood of St Laurence where she laid out her views about social policy. While she was reflecting the views of the Business Council of Australia,  the speech shows how profoundly her world view and vision is shaped by corporate and business ideas that are antithetical and hostile to a not- for- profit sector committed to social justice.

In the Sambell Oration Westacott called for a new partnership between the NGO sector, Government and business and urged the sector to engage in difficult conversations. The real purpose of those conversations was primarily for the NGO sector to adopt and advocate pro- business and pro- corporate policies of the Business Council of Australia that she argued were necessary to ensure wealth creation and economic growth, and ultimately social prosperity.

Westacott called on the NGO sector to support a new social contract, part of which was built upon accepting the BCA  agenda of :

• the need for eonomic growth to be unleashed
• lower corporate and personal taxes
• removal of any "regulation" that restricts profit making
• more flexible labour market
• reducing the size of Government and cutting Government spending

As Bernard Keane argued in Crikey Westacott's interventions in public policy have almost always driven by the self interest of the business community and corporate Australia.

The decades long neglect of the needs and well being of people with mental illness and their family members, carers and people affected has partly been the result of the dominance in public policy circles of the sort of "market fundamentalist" (neo-liberal) policy ideas that Jennifer Westacott and the Business Council of Australia advocate.

What on earth leads NGOs to think that corporate and business advocates and lobbyists who advocate for market fundamentalist policies are the best people to fight for and speak on behalf of some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people?

Oxfam shines the light on the sham of corporate sopcial responsibility

Oxfam's latest report and campaign  Behind the Brands confirms what many of us have argued for years- that corporate social responsibility is a sham; a ruse to conceal and detract attention away from the destructive practice of corporations.

Oxfam's report analyses the practices of the world's 10 most powerful food corporations and shows their destructive impact, despite the corporations deployment of the rhetroic and practice of corporate social responsibility. The report is a damning indictment of the practices of the world's major food corporations and the sham of corporate social responsibility.

The report delves below the surface of corporate responsibility rhetoric to show that the practices of the food corporations destroy not only the natural resources that support a global food system but the lives of food suppliers, employees and their customers.

Articles about the report are here, here and here.

The CEO of Oxfam, Barbara Stocking said:

"It is time the veil of secrecy shrouding this multi-billion dollar industry was lifted. Consumers have the right to know how their food has been produced and the impact this has on the world's poorest people who are growing the ingredients. The hundreds of brands lining supermarket shelves are predominantly owned by just 10 huge companies, which have combined revenues of more than $1bn a day while one-in-eight people go to bed hungry every night."

 The Oxfam Report shows that the major food corporations:

• are overly secretive
• rely on cheap labour
• fail to meet their own ethical standards
• ignore injustices occurring within their own supply chain
• fund and support programmes that are typically tightly focused around publicly appealing issues which fail to address the root causes of hunger and poverty
• conceal sourcing practices and routinely engage in sophisticated marketing and public relations campaigns in order to shape public opinion about food and how it is made.
• lack adequate policies to guide their own supply chain operations.
•  have failed to use their enormous power to create a more just system for farmers and local communities.
• have allowed land to be unjustly seized from poor farmers and rural communities over the last decade
• make claims of sustainability and social responsibility difficult to verify on the ground.