2007
2007.1. Humanitarian Migration Program 2007-08.
Submitted 25 January 2007 to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Australia.
Published: Victorian Humanist, Feb. 2007: 4.
Invited by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to comment on the 2007-2008 Humanitarian Programme, i.e. the migrant intake for those years, we submitted the following main points:
The Offshore Programme
* Vic. Humanists continue to support the underlying precepts of this section.
* In answering the question how to find those in greatest need of resettlement we point to the situation in Darfur, now called “the first genocide of the 21st century”.
* As many villages in Darfur have been obliterated by bombing, the few people who do survive will not have homes to return to at the end of this tragic conflict. More than a million refugees are now in squalid camps in Chad. All qualify under our categories for the Humanitarian Programme as they face not just discrimination but death.
* We urge that Australia offer to accept a large contingent of Darfurin refugees, as we did in response to [the] Tianamen Square massacre in China.
* We propose a scheme to facilitate their integration into our community and quote comments made by experts in this area.
The Onshore Programme
* We deplore the suffering inflicted on the asylum seekers in the detention centres which destroy their dignity and identity and violate their basic rights.
* The high security jails such as Baxter should be replaced by reception centres run by the state and not private agencies. Checks of health, identity and security should be made with no delay.
* When granted permission to apply for refugee status, asylum seekers should be free to stay with supportive individuals and be given interim visas so they can work or use the assistance scheme until refugee status is granted.
* Our offshore detention centres on excised islands are a mean device and unhumanitarian. This treatment of asylum seekers damages our reputation as a generous nation.
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2007.2. Global Warming and Climate Change
Submitted 17 February 2007 to the Minister for the Environment, Australia (M. Turnbull).
Published: Victorian Humanist, March 2007: 4.
To the Minister for Environment we made the following points on climate change:
• Victorian Humanists are convinced that unrestricted use of fossil fuel is no longer sustainable.
• We urge the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the use of our potential to lead in solar, wind and geothermal technologies.
• Greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced promptly and markedly. It [sic: They] should become costly while development of renewable energy technologies are given every support.
• Strict and mandatory energy efficiency should be required in all appliances and especially in cars.
• At present we are not convinced that the use of nuclear energy is beneficial. Dangers of waste disposal, high cost and time lag in development argue against it. We need immediate, clean energy production.
• We urge the Government to resist vested interests’ pressures and to act promptly for the whole nation.
• We suggest the formation of a special commission with high expertise on climate change and powers to implement appropriate measures and oversee their compliance.
• This generation will stand accused of gross irresponsibility by subsequent generations, if we do not act urgently to preserve their living space.
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2007.3. Access Card (1)
Submitted 18 February 2007 to the Minister for Human Services, Australia; copy to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, Parliament of Australia.
Published: Victorian Humanist, March 2007: 4.
On the subject of the Access Card we made the following main comments to the Minister for Human Services, with copy to Legal & Constitutional Senate Committee.
• Benefits of modern technologies have to be balanced against the risks they carry for data misuse and violations of rights to privacy.
• Humanists regard a right to privacy as a salient right, a main aspect of human dignity. And they regard a government’s respect for personal privacy as a mark of a democratic and civilised society.
• Wide consultation with society should be undertaken before the legislators change its human rights.
• The call for submissions on 22 December 20006 for January 2007 was a most peculiar timing to seek public opinion on this important matter.
• Assessments (KPMG) reports not open to scrutiny cause justified mistrust.
• Well-known breaches of privacy by unauthorised access (police, ATO, etc.) are of concern. The new databases will be available to a wide range of agencies and we expect frequent access, some of which may cause serious problems, such as disclosure of the address of a victim of domestic violence now at a secret location.
• Such large databases will be tempting to hackers. The Pentagon failed to prevent hacking.
• So-called “function creep” cannot be prevented; it has already occurred in the UK. An extension of function into an ID card cannot be averted: the card can be exploited or misused by future governments, as admitted by the Attorney-General.
• Arguments in favour of the card are spurious. It is not like a driver’s licence (limited information known to us), not compulsory to have (but essential for services access); it is not anti-terrorist; and it has been shown that it may protect criminals once they acquire false identity as the 11 September 2001 and Madrid bombers did.
• The dedicated and sophisticated will be able to insert false data or make duplicates.
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2007.5. Assisted Reproductive Technology
Submitted [June?] 2007 to the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Published: Victorian Humanist, July 2007: 4.
To the National Health and Medical Research Council, on Ethical Guidelines for the use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), we made the following main points:
• We express general support for the stated principles guiding ART and find the complex issues well considered.
• Gamete donors should have the prerogative to have excess embryos created for their IVF so that this excess can be used for research. We applaud such acts of altruism.
• Humanists regard the disposal of excess IVF embryos, rather than their use, an irresponsible action. It denies the opportunity to gain vital knowledge of early development, transmission of genetic disorders and other disease processes.
• Issues of privacy and confidentiality should be highlighted, given the unprecedented ease of access to personal data.
• We strongly oppose commercial trading in human gametes, for ethical and safety reasons.
• We urge that sex selection be used only to avoid transmission of genetic disorders and not as a matter of preference or to create a “balanced family”.
• We believe that surrogacy should not be prohibited by law and should be regulated by uniform national legislation to prohibit conditions in which harm or exploitation can occur.
• While we would prefer that all surrogacies be altruistic, there will inevitably be demand for commercial ones. Prohibition will drive the practice “underground” where safeguards and health checks might not be observed.
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2007.6. Community Organisations
Submitted 15 July 2007 to the Department for Communities, Victoria.
Published: Victorian Humanist, Aug. 2007: 4.
To the Department for Victorian Communities on their inquiry of [sic: into the] Stronger Community Organisation Project we made the following points.
• Humanists regard not-for-profit organisations as important parts of the social fabric.
• We describe the activities and areas of interest of the HSV.
• Such activities and the participation in public debates are an important part of the democratic process.
• To increase the capacity and improve sustainability of such groups we propose:
(a) provision of low-cost venues for the meetings and other activities (debates, lectures etc.),
(b) subsidies for the cost of insurance and security at these venues,
(c) regular training courses for managers and committees of such groups,
(d) provision of technical support for videoconferencing to overcome geographic barriers and rural isolation.
ADDENDUM
From the Victorian Humanist, June 2008: 4
Feedback
1. In response to our submission on Community Organisations (summarised in VH August 2007) we received the Report, recommendations and Victoria’s Action Plan to strengthen such organisations. $13.87 million was committed for this action. We received a letter of thanks for our input from the Minister for Community Development, the Hon. Peter Batchelor MP. The Report can be viewed on www.dpcd.vic.gov.au.
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2007.7. Access Card (2)
Submitted 16 July 2007 to the Department for Human Services, Australia.
Published: Victorian Humanist, Aug. 2007: 4.
On the redrafted Access Card Bill 2007 we added the following main points:
• The extension of public debate on this important issue is welcomed.
• We support Privacy Commissioners’ recommendation that the biometric information handling be subject to Privacy Act restrictions.
• Our remaining concerns are:
(1) the ease and dangerous consequences of forgery of the card;
(2) the unavoidable “function creep”, i.e. added information beyond the present intentions for the card and the future possibility of its use for social control;
(3) the large number of agencies exempted from protection by the Privacy Act will allow unwarranted intrusions into our privacy;
(4) there is no provision for compensation persons wronged under this Act;
(5) the statement in the Bill, that there must be disclosure of chip or register content to the individual, is qualified by giving the Secretary the power of discretion on this matter. We argue that honest disclosure is imperative.
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2007.8. Merit (Performance) Pay for Teachers
Submitted 22 [25?] July 2007 to the Minister for Education, Australia..
Published: (a) Discussion, Victorian Humanist, June 2007: 4.
(b)Submission, Victorian Humanist, Aug. 2007: 4.
(a)
Discussion
Performance bonuses (PBs) or “merit pay” for teachers
Background
Giving teachers PBs is a practice that seems to have originated in the USA. The idea is linked to existing political and economic characteristics of the broader society, which is highly competitive with emphasis on the individual.
The Federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, created a storm by announcing a policy of PBs for public school teachers, to be in place by 2009. She wanted state education ministers to sign on to her proposal, with the threat to withhold Commonwealth education grants.
While there is general agreement teachers ought to be paid well and paid more, teachers, teacher unions, educationists and others have voiced opposition to the form of her proposal.
Arguments against PBs
• The minister gave only a generalised version of how PBs might be allocated. Criteria mentioned were student results, and feedback from school community and parents’ groups.
• PBs had been tried in the past and later dropped as unsatisfactory.
• No additional money was to be allocated to public schools, so PBs would come from a redistribution of currently available funds.
• They are time-consuming to implement.
• They create competition and dissension among teachers and can destroy morale. Such systems reward a few teachers well, but avoid paying all teachers well.
Arguments in favour of PBs
• They could meet public demand for accountability.
• They might help attract talented professionals into the classroom and retain them.
• They may motivate teachers to teach better.
• Once teachers reach the top of their present pay scale, the only way to earn more is to reduce time spent in the classroom and take on more administrative tasks, i.e. become a head of a faculty, chief of staff, principal or vice principal.
While some forms of employment may lend themselves to PBs — for example, a salesperson can be assessed on volume or value of sales — teaching is a cooperative, multi-disciplinary profession. To remunerate on something as tightly focused as exam results leads to teachers teaching for exam passes, as examples from the past show, rather than trying to educate students in the subject. They may get good results, but the students’ overall education will suffer. Getting school community and parent feedback can readily lead to popularity being what is valued. Giving the principal too much say on PBs can lead to favouritism and toadying.
Different teachers inspire different students. For this reason it is important that teaching as a profession attracts a wide range of people. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that a teacher not considered all that competent on usual criteria can be inspirational to certain students. (The Age, 12 April 2007, Tony Thompson.) An overly regulated assessment system would squeeze maverick teachers out.
Points a humanist submission might make
1. We can express our strong preference that high quality, free, secular education for all children is the best investment a society can make in its future. To do anything else leads to privileged paths for some and impoverishment for others. Students from a wide range of economic, ethnic, religious backgrounds mixing together fosters understanding and respect for difference. Funding that encourages parents to send their children to élite fee-charging schools, fosters social division. Similarly funding to enable religious groups to start and run schools divides students with particular family religious affiliations from those with different or no religion. Fee-charging schools are rich because they draw funding from parents, government and possibly bequests. Public schools, by contrast, are under-funded and in most cases resource-poor. PBs can be seen as yet another attempt to appear superficially to “whip up” better quality in public schools, and absorb people’s attention with a side rather than central issue.
2. We can strongly object to the Minister’s proposal as being a smoke-and-mirrors trick, which diverts attention away from the need to fund government schools properly.
3. We might concede PBs would have merit, so long as the criteria and processes were thoroughly developed and agreed to by all the parties involved, teachers, principal, administration and parents. And if the eventual outcome is an improvement in the quality of education.
4. We could point out that educational outcomes are the product, among others things, of many years of teaching from kindergarten, primary to secondary. Humanists therefore ought to support a much more equal remuneration, one that values the contribution of teachers who lay the groundwork of basic literacy, numeracy and study skills, as well as those who teach specialised subjects. While there is a temptation to pay teachers of certain subjects more, e.g. pure maths and physics, this can set up hierarchies of status that is resented by other teachers.
5. At its heart the core issue to be resolved is remuneration for teachers that guarantees well-educated students, who can successfully take their place in society, and teachers with a high level of job satisfaction.
6. We could endorse the call of the national parents’ group, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, who have suggested that “teachers who promote the value of public education and their own schools should be considered for merit-based payment.”
Member input invited
HSV members with experience of teaching are invited to comment before we communicate with the Minister. This matter will be finalised at 8 July 2007 discussion.
(b)
Submission
To the Commonwealth Minister for Education on the ethics of performance pay for teachers (25 July), the following points were made:
• Providing progressive education that is universal, free and secular is the very best investment a society can make. Maintaining and improving the education system is a key responsibility of government.
• A simplistic approach to implementing performance pay would “throw the baby out with the bath-water”.
• Government attempts to make the individual teacher financially accountable evade their obligation to fund general education in the public interest. Social division fostered by inequity of access to education does not help a democratic society.
• Teaching is a moral art which cannot be controlled by bureaucracy. Teachers are not like sales staff, they are in professional relation (in loco parentis) with their pupils.
• The needs of the students are paramount, and salary reform can be justified only if the students get a better education. A positive learning environment has enthusiastic teachers who co-operate in helping individual students; the school will have a collegiate morale, and the staff will assent to their terms of employment. Therefore all teachers should participate in any salary reform and approve the assessment process.
• Valid assessment of a teacher’s performance is notoriously problematic, because there is no clear way to separate the effect of the particular teacher from the complex of factors contributing to learning. It is for educators, not government, to decide on professional teaching standards.
• Government schools need an increase in total funding, including higher salary bands for classroom teachers. Teachers need a detailed system of professional accreditation that is independent of employers, which would reduce the need for in-school performance review. Expert teachers would be attracted to and retained in the classroom by qualifying for higher remuneration.
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2007.10. Decriminalisation of Abortion, Victoria
Submitted 13 August 2007 to the Attorney General of Victoria and all Victorian Mebers of Parliament.
Published: Victorian Humanist, Sept. 2007: 4.
To the Hon. Rob Hulls, Attorney-General, we submitted the following main points on the Crimes (Decriminalisation of Abortion) Bill 2007 which was before the Victorian Parliament.
• Humanists regard abortion as an unfortunate necessity for many women. According to research, unplanned pregnancies are due to lack of sex education, intimate partner’s violence, contraceptive failure and restricted access to contraception.
• Therefore it is vital that safe and legitimate services are available for terminations of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. The present legislation jeopardises these requirements by legal uncertainties which lead to cases of prosecution, harassment and stigmatisation.
• Recent surveys show a large majority (81-92%) of public support for the woman’s right to make decisions in this matter.
• We applaud the success of a similar Bill enacted in the ACT in 2002 and note a rise in the number of abortions there, as predicted by its opponents, has not resulted there.
• In the interest of repealing outdated laws we strongly urge for the removal of Sections 65 and 66 from the Victorian Crimes Act and thus for the right of choice for women. This is a right well accepted by the community whose support crosses religious and political affiliations.
• We add comments on related issues:
(a) Sex education, the key to lower abortion rates should be a compulsory subject in schools.
(b) Pregnancy counselling should be free from sectarian influences and coercion.
(c) The Federal Minister for Health denies the availability of RU-486 [mifepristone] in spite of the approval of Parliament. This abortifacient, safer than the surgical procedure, is now used throughout the world and offers the confidentiality and privacy much needed in this matter. We regard this restriction as an abuse of our rights and of the democratic process.
P.S. An abbreviated version of this submission was circulated to all members of Victorian Parliament.
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2007.11. Abortion Law Reform, Victoria
Submitted 16 October 2007 to the Law Reform Commission of Victoria.
Published: Victorian Humanist, Nov. 2007: 4.
To the Victorian Law Reform Commission on the Abortion Law Reform, we made the following main points in answering specific questions:
• Legal and ethical principles underpinning this law should be: respect for the autonomy of a competent adult; recognition that abortion is an unfortunate necessity for many women; that this often-performed procedure needs safe and legitimate services; recognition of the large majority support for decriminalisation of terminations of unplanned pregnancies; and that every child should be a wanted child.
• To regulate termination and remove ambiguities in present legislation.
• Factors considered in lawful termination should be: informed request of the pregnant woman, threat to her life, her physical and mental health, her social and economic factors, rape, incest, foetal abnormality, heritable disease. We believe these reasons should be valid for all stages of gestation.
• The medical practitioner’s role should be to provide an informative and sympathetic consultation, advise but not coerce the woman to attend counselling sessions. The doctor should not be required to notify any authorities of this procedure. Statistical data to be obtained anonymously from service centres. A minor or mentally incompetent female to have a guardian appointed.
• It is imperative that counselling sessions be run by professionals and be free from any coercion or religious influences.
• All service providers who have conscientious objections to terminations of pregnancies should be exempted from obligations to participate in this procedure.
• Section 10 of the Victorian Crimes Act should be retained for cases of wilful, violent attack on a pregnant woman, perpetrators to be charged with offences against the woman and the foetus.
• Key elements in the new abortion law to be: removal of abortion from the criminal code, placing this procedure under relevant regulations in the Department of Human Services and the Health Professionals Regulation Act 2005; ensuring that terminations are performed in registered and accredited facilities; ‘backyard abortionists’ to be prosecuted.
• We strongly support the action taken by the ACT in 2002, which removed abortions from the criminal code and which explicitly allowed for legal abortions on request at all stages of pregnancy. (We note that the predicted increase in the number of abortions in the ACT did not occur.)
• We urge for a strong recommendation on the need for better sex education as the key to lower abortion rates.
• The restricted availability is a violation of rights.
• We congratulate the Commission on modernising an archaic law and suggest a 3- to 4-year sunset clause on the new law, given the rapid developments in biotechnologies.
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[End of 2007]
