Community Law Association

Ethics & Morality

Most Australians, even the otherwise well-educated, are surprisingly ignorant of these two terms; they know the words, of course - many can even spell them - but they find themselves unable to express what they mean, and what the concepts involve. I hope here to define and explain them in simple terms, and to clearly demonstrate how to know which is the right option in a 'moral dilemma' and what to do about it.

Morality is the group consensus of what is right and what is wrong. It is the origin of 'grass roots' law. Some communities hold, for example, that prostitution is not moral, and outlaw it; other communities have made it legal, and therefore, moral by establishment.

Ethics are the individual, inner assessment of the rights and wrongs of options confronted daily. You - and you alone - must judge whether what you are about to do is right or wrong, regardless of 'what everybody thinks'. You are the sole arbiter of this aspect of your destiny, this reconciliation of your interaction with the often illogical and harsh realities of the world and the dictates of your own conscience.

In Roman days, it was moral to keep slaves, with the right of life and death over them. It was moral to throw human captives to the wild beasts in the arenas, and to set gladiators to fight each other to the death. In Elizabethan times, it was quite moral to burn or drown women as witches. In Nazi Europe it was moral to gas millions of Jews, Gypsies and others. In the USA it was moral to shoot down Labour Union organisers. It was also moral to lynch people for their skin colour.

After World War II the Nuremberg Trials heard strings of participants in concentration camp exterminations claim as a defence for their actions that they were 'just following orders'. By establishing that this line did not constitute a defence for the commission of their actions, these trials established irrefutably that all men and women have a responsibility to look further than the directions of their boss, or the acceptance of their community, to establish the righteousness of their actions. Ethics trumps morality. Morality can never justify unethical behaviour, but can condone it.

This process of ethical judgement is essential to assess every one of our conscious actions in terms of its ethical value, both in our private daily lives and in our working lives. To do the wrong thing and attempt to excuse it with 'I'm only doing my job' is not good enough.

If a business engages in unethical behaviour - such as false or misleading advertising, which is illegal - not only is the organisation responsible and accountable in law, so also are the individuals within the organisation who perpetrated the actions and also those who, knowing them to be unethical, if only coincidentally illegal, did not move to stop these actions.

Of course, if I am a manager in a firm which has decided to 'stretch the envelope', which is the jargon for engaging in unethical and even outright illegal activity, and I make a stand based on my ethical perception of the situation, I will simply find myself fired, out in the street, most likely branded a troublemaker and blacklisted by every employer in town.

Is this right? No. Is this true? Yes: this is my story, and it has happened to many others. We must behave ethically, both individually and collectively, privately and in our employment, or Law and rectitude will have no run in the affairs of our community, and the law of the jungle will prevail as in the past.

Ethical behaviour will only prosper where its benefits are promoted to the community; ethical behaviour - usually required to counter 'moral' (ie, popularly acceptable) misbehaviour - is usually unpopular. Governments as well as schools and churches should promote ethical awareness and behaviour.

Every day you should examine every action your intend to take - it usually takes no more than an extra moment - for it's ethical status. Is it the right thing to do? Is it the wrong thing to do? Is it both right and wrong? More of which? Why should there be any wrong involved? How bad is it? Who will it hurt? Can I live with knowing that this action would be unethical? How much more unethical stuff will I be expected to do? Is this job worth losing my ethical integrity for, my deepest basis for self-respect?

Bottom line: go to work every day prepared to walk out of your job if you are asked to do what you believe to be unethical. You might starve, but you can do so with your head held high.

Does the Australian Government promote and support ethical awareness and behaviour? I answer this with a quote from a DEEWR Centrelink advisory to unemployed persons:
You may have a serious failure recorded against you (ie, your Dole will be stopped and you will starve in the gutter) if you, without good reason ... voluntarily leave a job or are dismissed from employment due to misconduct ...
Of course, all of the warmth and compassionate humanity of DEEWR snuggles in the words 'without good reason'. However, if DEEWR are to be the judge of something perhaps forced on me by my sense of ethical responsibility constituting a 'good reason', I don't like my chances of seeing another Dole payment. Does 'I can't accept that I am expected in my job to misinterpret statistics to support Government punitive and/or repressive actions against the unemployed' look like something DEEWR would warmly embrace as a good and acceptable reason?

This, mind you, from the people who brought us their very own little Catch-22 of the unemployed lines. When registered for the dole, you get allocated to a 'Job Support Network' provider - usually bearing the same relationship to supporting job seekers as Dicken's Dotheboys Hall bore to an educational establishment. The person appointed as one's life coach and mentor - my first one at Innerskill in Rozelle was no more than 17 years of age, moronically thick with it, apparently with a religious aversion to soap or deodorant, a great conservator of dandruff on the shoulders and collar of the one and only suit of clothing I saw him in over a period of nine months - proposed that I sign a Jobseeker Agreement, which I did.

The last time this happened, a new 'case manager' dictated the terms of the 'freely negotiated' Agreement, which in this case involved a new clause on top of all of the previous obligations stating that agreed to accept incarceration. When I refused to accept this incarceration, I was reported for a 'serious failure', and Centrelink without further ado upheld this ie, I was the second of three steps closer to being evicted to die on the streets of starvation and exposure. If I did sign the Agreement, I was volunteering for the incarceration, abrogating my human and civil rights. Ever hear the word 'duress'? Coercion? Dirty pool? Abuse of Human Rights? Ethical treatment of your fellow man?

Every officer of DEEWR, of Centrelink and of the Innerskill Gulag had the same considerations to offer: that's what it is, you have to do it. Individual treatment be damned. Although how can we claim it's not a personal service when the numbers they tattoo on the arms of each of us are unique to us alone?

The above history shows us many people acting morally, ie, they are doing what they are told, and they are told (if they ever bother to ask) that their instructions comply with the law. So they order people like me to starve on the streets. They say: 'It's your fault, you had the choice to sign the Agreement!' But I didn't - I could not ethically agree to incarceration. And as for the Innerskill and Centrelink people who are crushing out ethical behaviour by withholding the dole - well, I can only suppose that the reason the Government and the Job Support Network recruit people at these levels at the wages they do is to ensure that nobody knows what ethics are ... Heck, we say our Government is corrupt and unethical, we never said they were dumb ...

And how about the misconduct clause - say your boss told you to do something unethical, such as to lie to the media, and you lost your job because you refused. Having demanded of you that you lie for them, are they going to hesitate to cook up 'evidence' of misconduct against you, both to justify firing you and to blacken your name just in case you had been thinking of going public with the true story? And guess which of the two parties DEEWR is going to find more credible, as well as convenient .... hint: it's the one that won't be bothering them seeking Jobseeker Allowance.

Moral Behaviour: Some Bad Examples

In the USA of Bush and Cheney, it was moral to fabricate a war so the White House could appropriate absolute power and override the democratic process it was sworn to protect and preserve.

Howard is now proven to have lied direct on the 'Children overboard' matter; it was moral, most likely on the grounds quoted by President Nixon in the recent movie: 'When the President does it, it's not illegal!'

DEEWR is incarcerating unemployed persons, in order to increase their levels of distress to the level that they will commit suicide or turn to crime rather than return to Centrelink. The DEEWR line is that this is moral, because it is legally sanctioned, because it is 'in the Social Welfare Act', although no-one from DEEWR or Centrelink can actually show me where it says 'unskilled clerks in Job Network contractor's offices can decide that particular unemployed persons can be locked up at whim, and if they object we can make them homeless and see them starve'.

Ethics? Not in the clean, neo-conservative suburbs of Australia, thanks. Certainly not in Canberra.

Responsibility for Political Comments herein is assumed by
Peter Gargan, PO Box 457 Glebe 2037, and he authorizes their publication.