CaD - The Charter of Consultation and Dialogue

I have been missing in action for a couple of days working on the GreenFaith Australia submission to the Human Rights Consultation.

As a person who has been active in the community for over five decades, I am cheesed off. I am cheesed off at the way governments in Australia treat community organisations. In Victoria, in recent times alone, two high profile community organisations speaking out on environmental decisions of the Victorian Government have been run ragged and forced into virtual bankruptcy because of the power of the government to ride roughshod over community views. Each of these organisations has made the mistake of seeking recourse to law. I think their money would have better spent on advertisements and endeavouring to embarrass. Go to court and the odds are stacked very much in favour of the government: not least because they have the deepest pockets.

Any consultation taken by government mostly seems to be the one-way version. Here we are consulting. We are telling you what we have decided to do.

I am also concerned that we are not holding our corporations fully accountable for their actions with negative effect for the rest of us. So with this in mind, I have drafted two suggestions for the current Human Rights Consultation initiated by the Australian Government. They are below.

If you, dear Reader, think these are a good idea could you please do a cut and paste the two Rights as set out below and put them in your own email to the consultation. PILCH advises that this will be a numbers game. If you want to get your wishlist up and running, it needs to be supported by other submissions wanting a the same or similar wishlist. If you do this, could you also let me know by writing to misseaglesnetwork(at)gmail(dot)com.

THE RIGHT OF INTERACTIVE CONSULTATION AND DIALOGUE WITH GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATIONS

• Citizens and residents have the right to interactive consultation and dialogue – as individuals, groups or organisations - with governments, their agencies, agents and instrumentalities and corporations, whether public or private, which affect their interests.
• A code of conduct will be drawn up by governments and corporations with widespread and representative community input to ensure a high standard of interactive consultation and dialogue. Such interactive consultation and dialogue will be based upon freedom of information with the same rights of discovery as exist judicially. This will be known as the Consultation and Dialogue (CaD) process.
• All major environmental applications will be subject to the Consultation and Dialogue (CaD) process.

THE RIGHT TO CORPORATE AND PRIVATE ACCOUNTABILITY

• Citizens and residents have the right to hold corporations, private actors, agencies, agents and instrumentalities and similar persons and entities accountable for environmental degradation and despoliation impacting on the rights described here.
• Citizens and residents have the right to hold corporations, private actors, agencies, agents and instrumentalities and similar persons and entities accountable for cruelty and poor animal welfare practices in the supply of food.