Newcastle - Hunter Valley Research Foundation

June 24th

The largest part of this evenings event centred around Genetically Engineered food and whether they should be labelled.  Their undetermined long term effect on the human organism was one item of concern but other areas included the impact on biodiversity and the meaning of seed patents and ownership of these.  What would the impact be on small farmers?
We definitely felt the need for more information ourselves and that we would be well served with a higher level of public awareness of these issues.

Another fairly major topic was around the impact of mineral exploration and subsequent mining on indigenous people and their quality of life.  A need was expressed to take care when introducing a serious money culture into hitherto self or semi self sustaining communities.   Modern consumer attitudes are not necessarily the best for everybody and mining can, and usually does have an extraordinary impact on the quality of life and the cultural and religious life of these peoples.   Besides these considerations, people don't necessarily have the correct slant on information with which to make a truly informed choice.
Suggested that responsible shareholders be encouraged to check out their portfolio for ethical impacts and write to their boards and super funds about their ethical policies.
Some frustration is experienced when approaching investors who simply hide behind the law.   We feel that this is not a responsible set of rules by which to govern our corporate behaviours.

Now all this pontificating is fine but we also recognised the need to look seriously at our own ethical postures in our own ways of living and dealing with the world at large.  What is the relationship between our personal and our corporate   ethics.  Food for thought?

Two other topics kept us busy and thinking to finish up the evening.   The first was about the Media and the reporting of political issues.  Noting that the media is never neutral it is worth our while to consider that we have one of the most centralised media ownership situations in the world.  The gladiatorial style of interviewing under the guise of "devil's advocate" agenda becomes most disturbing when we really want our politicians to tell the truth and not simply run defence and not be game to say what is really going on.  There are many other implications to this confrontation method.

And the last area we covered included a need for attention to our spiritual life or at least some awareness of this aspect of our lives.  Our truth must be discovered and it behoves us to give ourselves the time to find just what that is for each of us.

All in all, a stimulating evening.  
Decided that the next one here at the Hunter Valley Research Centre will be on Thursday 29th July.