The rise of impunity as a challenge to democracy

Justine Nolan: Hello and thank you for joining us today. I'm Justine Nolan. I'm the director of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference and the first session this morning. Our conference is titled Accountability in crisis: the rise of impunity as a challenge to human rights. I welcome you all today from the land of the Bidjigal people who are the traditional custodians of the land of which I am on today and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
 
It's my distinct pleasure to introduce UNSW Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach. Today a member of the Institute's advisory committee and a renowned human rights advocate to introduce this opening session. Thanks, Andy.
 
Andrea Durbach: Thank you, Justine. And hello and welcome, everybody. Two years ago, when we pitched the idea of a conference on accountability in crisis, we took our cues predominantly from international phenomena that seemed to be occurring some distance from our own shores.
 
The rise of authoritarianism in countries such as Brazil and India, the fragility of foundational democratic institutions like the elections in America, and the expanding normalisation of impunity as a response to human rights violations. Little did we know that only months later, our own nation would become the stage for almost weekly manifestations of disdain at best, and contempt at worst, for accountability and for responsible governance across our parliaments, our corporations, the media, and even within the confines, the virtuous confines of civil society.
 
And so our conference perspective turned inward for some urgent self-examination driven by a concern that our democracy was at risk of insidious but constant slippage away from the values, principles and practices that we believed still held our democracy firmly in place. Accountability in crisis: The rise of impunity is a challenge to human rights takes place at a significant moment in our own country's history as we determine our allegiance to a mature democracy that embraces symbolic and practical accountability for First Nations Australians.
 
This opening session will consider factors that have contributed to the decline of accountability and the consequences for national democratic institutions and global stability. The session that will follow will feature human rights practitioners, campaigners and journalists who will debate how this erosion of accountability has impacted on their practice. And tonight, a panel of the new Australian gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales will explore how to reclaim accountability and restore public faith in the values and structures underpinning representative government.
 
It is now my pleasure to introduce you to the moderator for the opening session. Jeremy Heimans, one of Australia's and the world's expert accountability strategists and designers. In co-founding GetUp! in Australia, Avaaz, and more recently, Purpose, Jeremy has been a warrior in recognising the need to protect accountability as a key enabler of transparent, just and an inhabitable world.
 
His international bestseller, co-authored with Henry Timms, New Power: How Power Works in a Hyperconnected World and How to Make It Work for You speaks to new forms of accountability, mass participation and mass collaboration, which have emerged in response to a world where the balance of power, even in apparent democracies, have shifted towards an unhealthy and sometimes destructive concentration where impunity is increasingly trumping accountability.
 
So a great delight to have you and our panellists, our formidable panellists, open this conference. Thank you Jeremy.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Thank you, Andrea, it's really a delight to be with you all and really looking forward to this conversation. We have a really fantastic and very distinguished panel for this discussion. We have Lenore Taylor, who you'll know as editor of The Guardian. And, you know, at the forefront of a lot of these debates about the role of media in this quite difficult environment that Andrea described.
 
We have Chris Sidoti, of course, who is an internationally renowned human rights lawyer, teacher, expert and a former human rights commissioner. And we have Saffron Zomer, who leads the Australian Democracy Network and is very much at the forefront of campaigning for accountability, right, in a very difficult environment. So I'm going to do just a little bit of scene-setting just to kind of paint a little bit of a global picture of where I think we are. And then we're going to dive into a discussion with the panel that I hope is pretty free flowing.
 
And, you know, I think we all know we all feel that we're living in a context where there's really strong, sharply declining faith in many ways in institutions. And the data backs that up. And that, of course, is harming human rights and is a threat to human rights.
But it's much bigger than that. And so what we're going to do in this panel is take a kind of multi-sphere view, because I think a lot of the dynamics are very intersectional, right? The information environment is contributing to these problems. Shifts in the political environment are contributing, the weakening of civil society. And some of the legal edifices that we've all been counting on over, you know, since the post-war era really to hold up some of these norms.
 
So to the world, you know, I think we look at the place I live, the United States, you know, we lived through this extraordinary era in which we experienced firsthand what impunity and lack of accountability looks like from the very top. Right? So the Trump era was unique for its kind of daily flouting of those institutional norms, which, of course, generated much outrage, but almost no political consequences in many meaningful ways. Right? And even theJanuary 6th, you know, a situation which, of course, is the most egregious example in many ways of these flouting of norms, the most fundamental democratic norms hasn't really and yet experienced political consequences. And of course, he's the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president. We all know that we're at this very interesting juncture where the institutions that we have counted on are now seeking to hold them to account.
 
And the next 12 months, I think, is going to be absolutely fascinating to see whether those institutions are able to do that. And what happens in an environment where half the country doesn't actually trust those institutions in the first place. You know, we've also seen how other leaders all over the world sort of have taken their cues from this.
 
You know, we lived through the Bolsonaro era in Brazil. Many populist, authoritarian leaders have done this. But also, I think even in the Australian context, this really shows up in meaningful ways. You know, I was thinking about the kind of the golden era of 1970s and 1980s Australia, where people won't remember this. But in the, in 1982, the Fraser government had to sack a couple of ministers who forgot to pay their customs duty on a coloured TV that they were importing into the country.
 
The trivia of that, in an environment where of course in Australia the Morrison government clung to ministers who were accused of rape and sexual harassment and much, much more serious things, and the posture was fundamentally very different. We've also seen this show up in business and in culture. So I think the sort of Elon Musk model of leadership that really takes its cues from this kind of impunity posture, you know, where we're not expecting accountability, doing things that flout norms and in some cases laws and getting away with it. Right? And that style, I would argue, has a very strong gendered component to it as well.
 
You know, we move to the human rights sphere and we think about a place like Uganda recently where we saw the passage, the successful passage of the anti-homosexuality Bill there. I, as the campaigner, had been involved in trying to stop that bill when it was first proposed back in late 2010, 2011.
 
And I think it’s really instrumental what's shifted, right? The geopolitics on that have really fundamentally shifted, and it's led to a context in which the the diplomatic pressure that the US and Europe and others applied donor pressure in in 2010, 2011 didn't work this time. Right? And that the flouting of these basic human rights and the basic you know, the basic structure was a lot easier for Museveni to do in Uganda.
 
And finally, you know, we obviously see this very much in the Australian context right now with the voice where, you know, the debate has been has been well documented, including by The Guardian, you know, the disinformation and, you know, the outright lies that have been spread as part of this campaign. Partly notable for that impunity and the characteristics of that on everything from what a voice to Parliament would actually mean in terms of the rights that would confer and even these sort of debates around the electoral process itself and the voting process. Right? And the attempt to cast doubt on that. So it's a global phenomenon, but it's a complex one. What I'd love to do now is start with Lenore, actually, because I think the media dynamics here are, you know, and the information environment that we're in is kind of the air that we breathe, right? And I'm curious as to how you sort of view the media both as being part of the problem and as part of the solution. Right?
 
Because I think we can see that in the accountability context and also how you see the role of social media intersecting with that. Because I think part of what's interesting about social media, as we've seen in recent years, is both some of the most prominent examples of accountability have come from social media movements, often intersecting with good reporting.
 
The MeToo movement was a good one, are an example of that, but also of where some of the biggest challenges and this culture of impunity has really been cultivated. So I'm going to start with Lenore for her for her kind of opening thoughts.
 
Lenore Taylor: Thanks, Jeremy. Yeah, and I think I agree with you that I see the media as the sort of enabling institution in accountability, in that our job is to find the best obtainable version of the truth, and then institutions can use that to hold people accountable.
 
Politicians can use it to hold people accountable. Activists can use it to hold people accountable. We're sort of the Webb- enabling institution. And so if we can't do our jobs and or if people don't trust us to do our jobs, then lots of other parts of that process fall down. And so I think it's interesting to quickly think about why it's becoming so hard for us to do our jobs.
 
And then I guess also why I haven't entirely sort of given up all lost all hope in our ability to do our jobs. I mean, clearly, I know you talk about social media as having been an enabler and a positive force. And I think for a long time it was and I would argue now that most platforms are the opposite of that, we've got little choice but to disseminate our work via digital platforms.
 
But that often means that it is appearing alongside and indistinguishable from complete misinformation and disinformation. And a good example of that right now is what's happening on the platform formerly known as Twitter in relation to the situation in Israel and Gaza. I mean, that platform is openly disseminating disinformation on accounts that are verified because now you can just buy that, and, you know, the EU is actually trying to sort of chastise and fine Elon Musk for doing that. Now, for us, the problem with this is people can't always tell, you know, real news, news from an organisation that has an interest in the facts from unverified news and also people don't come across news by happenstance.
 
Back when you had a newspaper and you created you curated news. People might come to the paper for, I don't know, the football final and then see a story beside it which piqued their interest or made them think about something that they hadn't thought about before. That doesn't happen anymore. People are increasingly in sort of closed-loop ecosystems and then there are really bad actors coming into this whole problem and doing, I think, what the former Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, so eloquently called ‘flooding the zone with shit’.
 
So trying to put so much information of dodgy provenance into the ecosystem that people just couldn't tell what's true and what's not, they gave up. They chose a tribe. And then once you've chosen a tribe and you personally identify with that tribe, you are really motivated to only get news that agrees with you, that agrees with, you know, you have a personal interest in validating what you already think.
 
And that turbocharged is the filter bubble. And then you don't see anything else. And that's how you can get to a situation where 40% of Americans think that, you know, Donald Trump won an election, that he obviously lost, you know? And then how does accountability work when the citizens in a democracy don't believe in the facts? So it becomes much, much harder.
 
And now on top of all of that, you've got  AI - if Steve Bannon was flooding the zone with shit, I don't see nothing yet. AI is, you know, vastly, be more able to flood the zone with shit than he ever was. And so all of that makes our job harder. But I would argue it's our job more necessary and makes it more necessary to sort of stand up for and argue the case for verified and professionally sourced news.
 
And unfortunately, I think there are some people in the news media themselves who collaborate with who actually make worse the decline in trust in the news media. I remember when Scott Morrison went to visit America and met with Donald Trump, and it was and afterwards Sky News’s Paul Murray was the only person to get an interview with Donald Trump and he said how hilarious it was and how funny it was to see Scott Morrison smile when Trump took on the fake news media asking all those stupid questions.
 
The questions they were asking were about the Ukraine situation that actually eventually saw Trump impeached. So it wasn't fake news at all. But the idea that someone in the media would even use the term fake news and certainly in that context, is just exacerbating the problem. So I think there's a lot of reasons why it is challenging at the moment for the media to hold on to its central role in accountability.
 
But I don't think all is lost. I do have hope that there are reasons and ways that we can fulfill our role, but I probably should leave that to a bit later in the discussion. Or I can do it now if you want to. But, you know…
 
Jeremy Heimans: No, I think that's great. And I think we'll get to the hope here because I don't think the story is all doom right. And I think there's also the seeds of solutions. And I think a lot of the work that serious journalists are doing really provides the seeds of that hope. I think, you know, turning to you, Chris, you know, I think part of the loop here that we're trying to unpack is that people are losing faith in institutions.
 
They're partly losing faith in institutions for the reasons that Lenore laid out, right? The cycles of disinformation, the belief that, you know, you can ‘flood the zone’ so you just can't really figure out what's real and what's not. And then political actors exploiting that dynamic, right, to put more of that into the ether. So as you think about it, you know, your aperture is institutional, right?
 
You're thinking about what's led to the decline of institutional accountability, not just, you know, in Australia but internationally. It would be really useful to have you kind of give a little bit of a survey of what you see happening and also how you think it connects to two sort of media dynamics that Lenore described.
 
Chris Sidoti: I think, Jeremy, that your introduction was excellent in providing an overview of what is happening. And I agree strongly with the comments that Lenore has been making. It's extremely interesting. I'd like to look at the other end, though, and talk about the failure of institutions, because I think it's not just a matter of external attack on institutions, but also institutions that have raised expectations and then failed to deliver. Sometimes that's not their fault.
 
You know, often community expectations were never able to be met. And that was the case in the past as well as now in the present. But when we have political parties promising heaven on earth and not able to deliver it, it generates a disconnect between people who supported the party because of that commitment and that expectation and then the actual delivery.
 
It's interesting, though, that people are very forgiving of institutions when they understand the limitations of the institutions and are actually told the truth. And here I think the media's role is particularly important. Truth continues, I'm old fashioned, truth continues to be important. Fact and evidence-based policymaking continue to be important, but it needs explanation so that people understand what is happening.
 
But I think we've seen this gap between expectation and delivery on the part of parliaments, on the part of courts as well. Often certainly on the part of corporations and the international system and both human rights system where I'm involved and other forms of international life as well. Social media has certainly played a role in that. I don't call it social media, I call it anti-social media.
 
And that's what it is. There's nothing we can do about it. It seems to me. I'm not an expert in that area, and I just despair that I'm part of the tribe that reads The Guardian and reads the Herald and for that reason, I feel that I'm able to access, as Lenore described it, professional journalism; people whose job it is to dig out the facts and to report them and to elevate that kind of professionalism is a very important factor at the moment, but also increasingly difficult.
 
The one thing Jeremy and Lenore you've not mentioned is that swept up in this attack on institutions is an anti-elitism that makes it extremely difficult for anybody involved in a seminar like this, anybody participating or attending a conference like this to actually have very much traction when it comes to convincing people that we have a problem. It's not an insuperable problem, but nonetheless, it's a problem that has to be addressed.
 
I think the best that the elites can do is to make institutions more effective and prove the point that there is a better way, that there are better systems of delivery than we've got at the moment, and that people's expectations and perhaps not the pie in the sky ones, but the down to earth ones, those expectations can be met.
 
And so I'd like to see a focus on effectiveness, increasing effectiveness, as the best way of countering disillusionment.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Fascinating point, Chris. And I think, you know, it's a tough one, right, because of how sticky institutions are and how challenging it can be to actually to actually reform them, right? Because I think the responsiveness of those institutions and how atrophied many of them are is key to the problem.
 
Saffron, I think that's a good tie-in to what you do, right? You're thinking about both the health of democracies, right? Including the way that corporate power corrupts and pollutes democracies. But you're also thinking about, you know, the attempts to hold those institutions that are broken to account through movements and campaigning. Where do you sort of see and this is where I'm going to start building some hope here, because we know the progressives tend to be very negative for very long periods of time, and it's very demotivating.
 
So where do you also see some of the hope? Right? In the campaigning space? Because there have been some very bold examples of campaigners holding power to account in ways that have shifted the needle on issues like climate change.
 
Saffron Zomer: Yeah. Thank you, Jeremy. I have to confess, I just want to ask all these questions straight back at you to get your perspective on them, so maybe you can take off your moderator hat later on and share some of your thoughts. I'd love to hear.
 
Broadly speaking, like you just asked me a really big question, but broadly speaking, I think it's true that impunity thrives when people feel cynical and disengaged and they feel that they don't have the collective power to hold people to account. And I guess, unfortunately, that is often a description of business as usual in our democracy right now.
 
So I think every time we run a campaign, we need to think about the ingredients that we need to recreate, that make accountability possible. And so the first place that I have started thinking about this is actually in the stories that we tell about politics, because there's so many stories about, you know, the fact that politicians are just naturally corrupt and other voters are stupid and it's all too big to solve and the rot has gone too deep.
 
We really don't need any more of that because if we want to invite people to be part of a solution after we've just told them how much of a lost cause the whole thing is like, it's not a very compelling ask. So we want to share a vision of a healthy democracy that really does put people and planet first and is clean and fair and open and accountable and share a pathway for people to come and be part of making that true in the future.
 
I really love this concept of radical imagination that I see coming out of some activist colleagues in the States. And I think our democracy really needs, like a brave and generous act of radical imagination. This is the thing that humans created. It can be any way we want it to be. What you see today, it doesn't have to be the way that it is tomorrow.
 
And whether it will be or not is entirely up to us in a democratic system. And just as an example of how powerful that can be for people: we collaborated with the documentary that the ABC ran in 2020, Big Deal, which was all about money and politics. Thousands of people watched that movie and then came and joined that campaign because one side had an experience of clearly understanding the problem and agreeing that there was a solution.
 
They wanted to be part of it. So I think the stories that we tell are really important way of challenging impunity and bringing people back together to believe that it could be different. We also want to connect people to each other. So over the years we know union membership, school and our membership of faith based organisations as well, and membership of nonprofits and charities and volunteering as well.
 
And people have less close friends. We know less of our neighbours, like we're feeling much more isolated and less connected to each other. And, you know, as a citizen in a nation state size democracy, a single voice isn't that powerful. So the source of our citizens power is, I believe, in the collective. So when we come together in communities of shared concern, that's when we can impact the outcomes on issues that matter to us.
 
So we always look to campaign in ways that bring people together and connect them in communities so that we can show people that when they work together, they are building power to be able to hold the powerful, to account, in turn. Obviously we need a strong legislation like proper rules, codes of conduct, strong institutions that make it clear what our shared expectations of those we elect to powerful positions are.
 
And so it's really clear when they've crossed the line, that makes it much easier to hold them to account. And in lots of these spaces, Australian rules are well below best practice and we lack some key institutions. It's great that we have an anti-corruption commission now, but it's kind of wild that we didn't have it until so recently.
 
And then finally we think about how we work to build the connective tissue between civil society organisations. So one of the challenges that we have in this space, I think, is that the health of our democracy and accountability in our democracy impacts our ability to make progressive change on every single issue, whether it's health or human rights or climate crisis.
 
Democracy is like a threshold question: Is it functional enough to give us what the world needs? But generally speaking, for each advocacy organisation, democracy is not their mandate, it's something else. So finding ways to help civil society work together to shift this whole system so that opportunity opens up for all of us to get better outcomes is a project that I think helps us to hold the system to account and to make progress across all the issues that impact our lives and the people that we love the most. But that's top level. I'll leave it at that. We can dive into whichever bit we want to later on.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Yeah, thank you. Saffron, one thread that I'm hearing that is, I think, I want to stay with hope for a little bit is, you know, the challenge of moving people to a place where they're focused on solutions. That's something that each of you in your realms need to do in different ways, right?
 
So Saffron, I mean, you're describing how do you do storytelling about democracy reform, which is kind of a dry and quite abstract topic. But as you say, it's the underlying dimension for so many of the problems that we face. You know, Lenore, solutions journalism you know, and that field is a is a very positive and hopeful one right where you tell stories about solutions to problems and you actually tell stories where institutions are working not just with where they're failing, but I imagine those are probably not as well read as the stories that are about outrage and scandal, right?
 
And Chris, you're describing the institutions themselves, quite rightly needing to reform, right? But, you know, how do those you know, how do those institutions sort of do that in a visible enough way that they break through the cynicism? And what are some of the more practical ways? So those are really questions for each of you. I'm going to with you to start with Lenore on the storytelling stuff, because that surely is a constraint that you and your journalist face.
 
Lenore Taylor: So I don't really look at it through that lens. It is true that we try to always offer some hope, some solutions, some ways that people can act when we're reporting on things. That is true. I mean, our slogan is ‘hope is power’. So, yes, that is part of what we do. But I kind of see a challenge.
 
We can't only do that. We have to write about what is happening, whether it's good or bad, whether it's depressing or uplifting. We need to write and present the world as it is. Yes, we put solutions and hope in whenever we can, but we have to follow the facts. So I see the main issue we have as how do we encourage people to trust us because basically that's the heart of it, right?
 
Trust is at the heart of this. And one of the reasons I do feel sometimes hopeful, weirdly, is the pandemic, because we saw in the pandemic when governments dialled down, in Australia that is, when governments co-operated, when they dialled down the outrage and when news organisations, because it was a really genuine domestic crisis, dialled down the polarisation and the partisanship and just reported the facts.
 
Audiences loved it, loved it. Our traffic was higher than it's ever been before and trust in all institutions, the media, government, everything went up by all measures, by Scanlon, by our Guardian Essential Poll, by the Reuters Digital Media Index. Everyone's trust went up. So if you stick to the facts and if you don't try and polarise and politicise everything, people do trust you more.
 
I think there are things that we can do to enhance trust in our aid as an institution. One of, the biggest one is transparency. To be upfront. If you make a mistake and to kind of show your workings out, to explain to readers how you're coming across a story, why are you writing it the way you are? That kind of open, transparent journalism enhances readers’ trust.
 
Another one is being open to conversation with readers. Even though social media has become toxic and is less helpful in ways that it was before, there are still ways that we can do that when we want to do a big investigation. Probably the first thing we usually do is a call out. You know, we're working on one about childcare at the moment.
 
You write a form to readers, saying, ‘Tell us your experiences. Come back to us with what you see’. Being engaged with your readership like that enhances trust. Another one is the diversity of your newsroom. If you have a newsroom that is made up entirely of one kind of person, you only see one kind of story. And then all the people who want to read you notice that you're only seeing one site, one type of story, and you're not reflecting the world as they see it.
 
And then they don't trust you as much. And then the thing is standing up for what we do, like defending what we do as important, which is what I'm trying to do.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Well put. Chris, do you see institutions that are pointing the way to how to push back against this lack of accountability? I can't name an institution that I would say is the model in this.
 
Chris Sidoti: I think institutions as a whole are struggling and the collapse of trust in institutions over the recent decades has been a real challenge for them, and I don't think they know how to respond. I don't think that they have a plan, and that's where we see the struggle. I would hope that we don't need a pandemic to build people's trust in institutions.
 
But Lenore has rightly pointed out that the impact of the pandemic had to me, it's a matter of good laws and good people, ultimately. Saffron talked about the inadequacy of law in Australia, and that's absolutely correct. We are not just, if we want to compare ourselves, not just well behind most other liberal Democratic states, but we talk up one language and we institute laws that are another.
 
We talk about commitment to human rights, for example, but we don't have a federal bill of Rights or Charter of Rights, and only three of our eight state and territory jurisdictions do. And that's just not good enough. We have to have good laws. The second thing we need, though, is good people. And here I think the failure generally in Western countries has been most severe.
 
The kind of basic operating decency that used to be the norm has been broken down. And the instance you gave earlier Jeremy, about ministerial accountability is one example of that. We have had times in the past where we have had ministerial accountability demonstrated at a very high level, as you say, with the colour TV affair, which I remember well, and the Paddington Bear affair, which came soon after it.
 
Now it seems that the gross misconduct on the part of ministers is excusable, the way in which some leaders advocating against the current referendum have conducted that campaign is absolutely disgraceful and would not have been seen in past times. It seems now as though anything that achieves the result is acceptable. This is putting the end ahead of the means and the commitment to doing the right thing and not just getting the right result seems to be lost in all of the fires.
 
So we need good laws and we need good people to administer those laws. We need to have a consciousness that that law exists to provide guidelines, the guardrails along the sides of our democratic life, and then the role of the media and popular movements like Saffron’s become critical to ensure that those laws are enforced and that decency triumphs in the way in which leadership is exercised.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Right, let's spend a bit of time on the voice, because obviously it's something that's on everybody's mind this week. I mean, what is the accountability mechanism for post this outcome, whatever it is? But assuming it is a no, what's the accountability for those who've spread that disinformation? Because I think that at the end of the day, is part of the challenge is the impunity dynamic.
 
Saffron, you know, how do campaigners actually have any bite to that? And similarly, I think the media dynamic is challenging because the media you can call out, you know, there's a large there's a large commitment now among mainstream media to calling out disinformation when they see it. But the documentation of it is no match for the dissemination of it, particularly on the platforms that Lenore was describing earlier, like Twitter.
 
So, Saffron, like, is there a strategy to exert a political cost for those who are spreading that or, you know, because I think without doing that, it's very, very hard to shift these dynamics.
 
 
Saffron Zomer: Yeah. Before I answer that question, Jeremy, just in relation to one of my comments, I do want to add, I spent a lot of years of my career as a as an advocate at Federal Parliament House.
 
And one thing that really did strike me is I consider myself in the tribe, as Chris said, who reads The Guardian. And I think we self-conceived as a kind of leftie lump on the body politic, you know, like not part of the mainstream. But I was really struck that across the political spectrum, everyone had always read The Guardian, like all the staffers would know what was in The Guardian.
 
Any time, you know, it was covering issues that we were advocating on. And it did just remind me that, like, people do want to know the facts and they can tell which outlets are providing the facts for the most part. Like, I'm not dismissing how messy and confusing that whole social media space is, but I was quite heartened to realise that actually people across the spectrum are looking for facts and reading the outlets that they think provide them.
 
So I think that The Guardian has a broader readership tribe than you might think. They just might not be leaving the copy of it on their desk because it doesn't jive with their public identity, perhaps. But that was an aside, in terms of consequences for the voice. To be honest, I feel like up until the last votes are counted, the focus will just be on getting every last part that is possible for the Yes campaign.
 
I think this is really surfacing. A big question that I brought into this whole conversation, which is that I feel like the idea of accountability, we throw it around a lot, but I'm not always sure that we have a clear understanding of what we mean when we say it. And I mean including myself. In this critique, I feel like it's pretty clear that without consequences there is no accountability.
 
So there's got to be social consequences or economic consequences or political consequences. It's got to be some combination of those things, or you're in the territory of impunity, not accountability. And then, I mean, you open up with this example of consequences for people who are unpaid their customs on a colour TV, like some people might say, ‘That was beyond accountability and kind of ridiculous’, right?
 
Like, that people had to pay that serious of a price for what is a relatively trivial stuff. Yeah, so what is an appropriate consequence? But spreading disinformation in this way? I think a little bit it depends who you are. Like if you are the leader of a major political party who had used this moment in history for your political gains in a very, I guess, deliberate way, political consequences will be really appropriate.
 
But that will depend on how we all feel about it and whether we decide to use our political agency to create a political consequence or not. Righ? And I don't know that out in civil society, well, people are turning their minds to that. The question I'm curious about is for the voting public seeing this play out, like how will we all respond to what we're saying and will there be like an organic, broad based political consequence for the people who use the voice debate in this very cynical way?
 
Jeremy Heimans: I don't know the answer to that one. Chris, Lenore, would you weigh in on this question?
 
Chris Sodoti: I'd like to pick up this issue of consequences, because I think it is the most critical issue. And here I, I rely on some evidence. Work that has been done by criminologists for decades, indicates that the most effective deterrent against crime is the certainty of being caught and dragged before a court is not the severity of the punishment, which is why so much of the law and order debate is so misconceived.
 
It's not the severity of the punishment that is the greatest deterrent. It's the probability of getting caught and being held to account before a court. And this is what why impunity is, is such a grave risk to a society that if there is a sense that you can get away with doing anything and never get held to account, we will have a continuation of that course of conduct.
 
And in my work internationally in human rights law, I see this all the time. I work, in particular, in recent years on the situation in Myanmar and the situation on Israel and Palestine and in both of those cases, impunity is probably the bedrock issue that is leading to a perpetuation of the conduct that we have seen, the gross conduct that we have seen in both areas.
 
So the consequences have to be real and they have to be certain before we see any movement towards the good people that that I advocated for earlier.
 
Lenore Taylor: And I would just add that we're actually talking about something that sort of is, comes before consequences, and that is can we agree on the facts of the situation or the facts of what has happened for which consequences might ensue? And actually, that's what's not happening. We don't, we are losing a common understanding of facts as a guardrail of the public debate. I remember the first time I felt this happening as a reporter was during the carbon tax debate, where I just couldn't keep up with the nonsense. You couldn't fact check it fast enough.
 
It just kept on coming. Now that's kind of normal. And that's exactly what's happened in this voice debate. The misinformation just kept on coming faster than you could fact check it or fast… And also, if I'm spending all my time, if my reporters are spending all their time fact checking falsehoods, we're not spending that time writing about truth. So it's a double edged problem.
 
And one thing that happened in the voice debate, which I see happening all around the world, is that when there are actual fact checking organisations, doing fact checks - the people spreading the misinformation attack the fact checking organisations. And that's exactly what happened in the voice debate. A fact checking organisation said that something that had appeared on Sky was not true.
 
It was removed from a social media platform. And then there was a whole campaign against the fact checking organisation. And that pattern happens again and again. So it's like the concept of truth and facts is dissolving. And then, well, what are you holding people accountable for? And the other thing that happened in the voice debate was attacks on the AEC itself.
 
So the institution responsible for conducting the ballot is having to, you know, put up on its website a long list of misinformation points that are being widely disseminated, like ‘No, if you fill out your ballot in pencil, no one's going to rub it out’. You know, that's not going to happen or, you know, really crazy things. Now, I don't think that's happening through sort of mainstream media organisations, but it's really widespread online.
 
So I think, you know, the accountability is important, but then we need to agree on the facts of what people are, institutions are being held accountable for, and we're not.
 
Jeremy Heimans: And I think it speaks to the kind of work that Saffron is doing on democracy, right? We clearly also need intentional work on the information ecosystem that we're living in that is also campaigning to reform it.
 
And you made this point, Lenore yourself. You can't, none of these problems get fixed if the if the pipes are full of are full of junk, right? And that's only going to accelerate on current trends for a whole bunch of reasons, including AI, right? And so, you know, I think piecing the problem out there is the social media dynamics, which are very much problems of powerful tech companies and who owns them and how they're regulated.
 
But then there are also problems of mainstream media that obviously we've seen in Australia with the Murdoch press and others and teasing those dynamics out. But there's certainly a campaigning opportunity for that, I would think, on getting people to focus more on the health of the media ecosystem. Do you agree with that Saffron?
 
Saffon Zomer: Yeah, and any time we do a public event, if this comes up without fail, people are very concerned about the media environment.
 
They see it as a critical issue to restoring democratic health. So I think that's really probably understood and I think there's real appetite for that. Unfortunately, it's also a really messy environment that I think has outstripped the pace of regulation. So, the way that the technology has developed has happened so quickly that I think regulation doesn't even know what to do to fix all the problems that we have with it right now.
 
This came up a lot before the election when people were raising their concerns about media concentration and the interpenetration of politics and media. So not everyone knows this, but there's a very rapidly revolving door between the major media conglomerates and political offices and public service departments. So, you know, that problem of state capture doesn't just apply to industries.
 
It's part of the media ecosystem as well, if that's the right word to use about media. So people are very concerned about this who who are in our campaign network ahead of the election. And the you know, like none of us can fix this huge problem with the stroke of a pen. But the thing that I always wanted to share with people, which is maybe relevant as we're so close to this referendum, is that every political operator knows that the gold standard of political communication is a personal conversation with someone from your own community who you trust.
 
And in some ways there is a way that we can break through all of this babble of misinformation that constantly surrounds us, which is to talk to each other and share trusted sources of information that we know are out there and are reliable. And in terms of like helping other people cut through all of the confusing disinformation that is out there, I just really think that one thing that we forget to do is reclaim our own agency in this space and to be sources of reliable information for others in our own communities.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Yeah. And I think in the hope category, the you know, not all regulatory environments on this are the same. And the Europeans have done a better job at limiting some of the worst impacts of these social media platforms that haven't resolved it, but certainly much better than in in the US and arguably in Australia. Chris, I can see a path to kind of maybe reforming and pushing back against big tech in social media.
 
I can see a little bit of a path to pushing back against the mainstream. I have more trouble in a way visualising how we reform the human rights space, right? Which is this, which is what a lot of the people who are who are listening in on this conversation and, you know, our practitioners and our students of that of that field, right?
 
And you mentioned the kind of, you know, the kind of slippage in the institutions. And a lot of the consequences you describe rely on a human rights framework that is fraying. And the human rights defenders who are being kind of choked down in lots of places. What do we do? I mean, is there a path to reforming and rebuilding the existing infrastructure or the parts of the human rights framework and infrastructure need to be reinvented?
 
Chris Sidoti: I think it needs everything that needs reinvention. It needs at the very least, renewal. And certainly needs recommitment. We're coming up December this year to the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now, that was a landmark event, a great document that came out of the trauma of World War Two. And I always wonder whether we would be capable of producing the Universal Declaration today in the way that those around in 1948 were capable of producing it then.
 
And I suspect we're not. I think there is not just too much polarisation at the political level globally, but too much polarisation at the domestic level in in each nation. And the best example of that is us. The fact, as I said, that we don't still have effective human rights protection in this country. And so we ourselves are perhaps the best example of the limitations or even the failure of the great post-World War Two human rights project.
 
So there does need to be renewal, there needs to be good law making, and we need to go to a point I made earlier about the effectiveness of institutions. Now, I think the best way to convince people of the value of human rights is to show how law and institution can make a difference in the human rights world.
 
That is, improve the conditions of indigenous people, protect those who are encountering discrimination, make sure that the results of the Disability Royal Commission are reflected in law and practice. If institutions can prove their effectiveness, we will see, I have no doubt, a turnaround in opinion about the value of the Human Rights Project. But we really are right back at the bottom floor in trying to convince people anew that this is a worthwhile way to go.
 
The level of distrust of institutions, the level of cynicism about the effectiveness of law is so great that challenges is a mighty challenge. And that's been going on now for the last 30 years. It's not something that we say just arose in recent years. It's a long-standing problem, but it's a subset of what we have been discussing about institutions and accountability.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Do we see possibility in the climate space, right? So obviously this is a place where you've got both polluters and governments behaving with impunity, but it's also an area where there's huge efforts to create accountability from all the sectors that are represented in this conversation? Maybe Safran has a perspective on this? I know you've been involved in climate campaigning.
 
Do you see that as a place to model some of the new strategies to counter accountability, this accountability crisis, or is it more part of the bad news?
 
Saffron Zomer: Well, that's a really hard one, and I feel like part of the reason it's difficult is that there's not an unlimited amount of time to turn things around. And some of the harm that's already irreversible is so incredibly significant that I'm not even sure what consequences would be appropriate.
 
I do feel like we to remain focused on the future and hopeful. And if there is a place to build really innovative, bold, large-scale campaigns that demand that our systems deliver on the public interest, climate is the place I 100% agree with you. I also think there's huge opportunity in the intersection of democracy and climate. If we're going to completely rewire our economy, we don't have to replicate the way that we set it up the previous time.
 
The whole system that created climate change is probably not the system that's going to get us out of it. So I think there's so much opportunity to reimagine how we own and share and develop the new economy that we made to get us through this crisis and how we democratically balance competing needs around environmental protection and electrification and First Nations rights over land and just so many different aspects of this that come together.
 
But in terms of, like, the accountability primarily, I think for the fossil fuel industries that have made their money off this crisis and for their allies in political establishments all around the world, honestly, like ‘off to the Gulag’. They have a lot of responsive polity for what they have done. That was completely off brand for a Human Rights conference. Retract that last statement.
 
Jeremy Heimans: It was meant in spirit. Lenore or Chris do you want to weigh in on this question?
 
Lenore Taylor: I reported on the climate crisis for 30 years since the first Rio Earth summit and every COP since and the ten years of mind numbing, idiotic climate wars. And the thing I think as a news organisation we have to do is tell the truth, which is why we call it global heating and it's why we call it a climate crisis, because that's what it is.
 
But again, there are all these distractions and diversions and sort of, you know, misinformation type things on the side. Even now, when we had an election where you'd have to say the Australian public said we want action on global heating, there is a really well-organised campaign to try to divert everyone away onto or maybe we need small modular nuclear reactors.
 
Now, whatever you think of them, they take ten years. We don't have ten years. So again, I'm having to deploy resources to explain why, you know, nuclear power might work and be a part of the solution in other parts of the world, but why here it doesn't make sense why we have low cost - you know, like just the diversionary tactics just keep coming. And again, the way to combat them is to just stick very, very firmly to the truth, even though in this case, the truth is really scary.
 
Jeremy Heimans: And we only have a couple more minutes left. So I want to like allow each of you to convey a message to this conference, right. Which is a group of people who are thinking about not just the Australian context, but the global context and how we address this crisis of accountability. You know, from your vantage point, what's the most important thing we can be doing to address this crisis? And I'll start with Chris.
 
Chris Sidoti: If I may, Jeremy, and particularly for those that are participating today, it really is about being committed to institutional effectiveness. As you said in your introduction, I'm someone who works in institutions and as I said, this is a kind of elite event, which means that all of us, both participants and presenters, are in positions within institutions where change is possible.
 
How do we get universities to focus on more than fundraising and how do we get human rights commissions to actually deliver better for the human rights of people? And how collectively can we make Parliament more accountable and more, more useful? So to me, that's the greatest challenge, and that's something that is actually within the power of the people who are participating today.
 
Lenore Taylor: So within my sort of narrow part of this, I would say spread good, real factual news. And from The Guardian and from other news organisations that believe in factual professional newsgathering and stand up for it and stand behind it, because I think it is at the centre of our ability to hold all institutions, all powerful people to account.
 
Saffron Zomer: I think for me, as you can probably tell with my answer to your last question, I've spent most of my career working in the climate movement and have found it progressively harder and harder to keep doing that work as the scale of the catastrophe we're heading into becomes bigger and closer, and I kind of came to this realisation a while ago that part of the problem was that we have a democracy that's just actually not capable of delivering what we need to solve the crisis.
 
And so I decided that we should have a new organisation in Australia that would bring civil society and people who care about democracy together to try and fix it. And we only launched four years ago, but we already have a little team of nine. We have thousands of people working with us all around the country. We have civil society organisations who care about this too.
 
And I guess my personal learning from that experience has been just not to underestimate what is achievable from that little stage. We have changed a number of laws. We have brought heaps of funding and new partners into this space. We provide a pathway to action for thousands of people who are feeling depressed about democracy and didn't know what to do about it.
 
Yet none of us can do everything, and none of us can solve any of this on our own. But all of us can do something. And the thing that you might be able to do could be a lot more impactful than you realise as you set out to do it.
 
Jeremy Heimans: Thank you. Thank you so much, Saffron. Thank you to all of you. And a really inspiring note to end on, which is really, we cannot cede the ground to those who act with impunity. And I'll turn now to Andrea to continue the program.
 
Andrea Durbach: Thank you, Jeremy, and thank you all our panellists for a marvellous introduction, sobering introduction, to our conference. It's been an incredibly helpful and instructive and illuminating, if somewhat depressing conversation.
 
And I think we’ll build that hope as the day progresses, I'm hoping to do that. But thank you so much for all your time and expertise. Thanks again, Jeremy, for your time. Go to sleep -and thank you all again. Lenore, Chris, Saffron for your marvellous, marvellous contribution to our conference, we're enormously appreciative.
 
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