ACHIEVEMENT: Decisions I make pass a test of being 'the right thing to do.'

TARGET DATE: Today.

PROGRESS: Ongoing.

Since being elected, I have graduated as a Vincent Fairfax Fellow through the St. James Ethics Centre, completing an 18 month Ethics and Leadership course as a requirement for qualification.

I have proposed that Melbourne City Council adopt an ethics program that allows voluntary participating of staff, and in the future, expands to include a program for public participation by residents.

DESCRIPTION: I was selected for and completed an 18 month Vincent Fairfax Ethics Fellowship through the St. James Ethics Centre between 2000 and 2002. The Fellowship involved ten weeks away from Melbourne, including 10 days on a remote mine site in Northern Australia, Chatham house discussions in Canberra, analysing ethics issues, setting my own ethics question in South East Asia, participating in an Ethics Conference in Bangkok and participating in residential sessions in Melbourne.

My ethics question involved travelling independently in Burma for three weeks to consider the question of 'Whether all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing?' My conclusion is that sometimes this is true, but usually responsibility is dispersed more widely among individuals, their society and the situations they are in.

While applying ethics for me is a case by case situation, I try as often as practical to make decisions by reducing them to the question of 'Is it the right thing to do?'

I also use a Green perspective to consider whether the decision will be one that I expect would be seen as being the right thing to do when looked at for what it contributes to the future.

Since graduating form the Ethics Fellowship, I have become a member of the St. James Ethics Centre.

FURTHER INFORMATION: The St. James Ethics Centre website is at: ethics.org.au

The St. James Ethics Centre operates a free telephone service to help you work through ethics issues. The service is called Ethi-Call and is at Ph: 1800 672 303.

The Vincent Fairfax Fellowship courses are operated annually, selecting 15 candidates from applicants. Applications usually open around May each year for selection of candidates around August to begin the Fellowship in the following January. The courses are very expensive to run, but provided at no cost to candidates due to sponsorship by the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship. Information is available on the St. James Ethic Centre website.