Presentation to Byron Shire Council regarding its proposed Ethical Buying Policy
Yesterday I addressed Byron Shire Council, where the Green mayor - Jan Barham - had proposed ( agenda item for the motion) the creation of an ethical purchasing policy, after the bad publicity generated by awarding a sewage upgrade contract to Kellogg Brown and Root.
The motion was passed 8:1 after much debate with only Cr Tucker objecting.
My address, with links to the sources of the material I quote, follows ....
Good morning, I’m Mitra Ardron from Natural Innovation, and I’m the organiser of the Byron Sustainable Ventures Network, a loose network of around 60 people from 35 businesses
I’d like to thank Byron Shire Council for it’s initiative to consider developing an ethical purchasing policy and to speak in favor of it.
I believe it is timely to bring this topic up now, not only because of the controversial decision regarding Bangalow’s Sewage plant, but also as large and in particular multi-national companies have largely succeeded in creating an environment where regulations skews purchasing away from small business and towards large ones, and where the only factor that is taken into account in purchasing is the dollar. An environment where it is perfectly ok for companies to merge for greater global impact, but where citizens are discouraged from working together in their purchasing.
An Ethical purchasing policy could serve two purposes
1: to directly protect the residents and environment of Byron Shire from the non-financial impacts of purchasing from companies that might have a poor track record.
2: to support the values we would expect to uphold in our own purchases that impact people or the environement in other places.
After all, we are being exhorted from many quarters, to vote with our dollars, and I do not believe this should be restricted to when we are purchasing as individuals, the businesses involved in the Byron Sustainable Ventures Network take account of ethics in their purchasing, and I believe we should expect this of our collective purchases at all levels of government.
Byron would not be the first council to do this, for example, Vancouver in Canada (Full text of Ethical Purchasing Policy, and Supplier Code of Conduct), Bangor in the US (full text of policy), have policies in favor of fair trade and against sweatshops, and According to the Wilderness Society website, Byron Shire is one of 4 councils in NSW that has a policy against dealing with companies such as Boral and Bunnings involved in woodchipping.
In terms of implementation, I believe the most obvious and immediately implemental step that council could take would be to require full disclosure from companies that would like council’s business.
The most obvious disclosures would be of environmental offences for example it would probably have been relevant to council’s decision on the Bangalow Sewage Works that KBR is under investigation by US senators for knowingly supplying water contaminated with sewage to the Iraqi army, and preventing its employees disclosing this. (as reported by ABC (US), Reuters and the Guardian)
Also we should require disclosure of issues reflecting on the integrity of suppliers. For example it would also potentially be relevant that KBR and its related entity Haliburton have been caught taking or receiving bribes in countries as diverse as Kuwait and Nigeria. (as reported in Haliburton Watch)
To ensure that unethical activities aren’t hidden, companies should probably be required to extend the disclosure to related companies, (parents, subsidiaries, siblings etc) and to include cases where no conviction was recorded since as we all know in many countries a bribe is cheaper than a fine.
To protect council from dealing with litigious companies, disclosure should also be required of court cases, or threats of them brought by companies against governments or civic society organizations, or people acting in their role as participants in government or civic society. For example it might be relevant to a desire to deal with Gunns that they are suing Senator Bob Brown personally for exercising his civic role.
If there are concerns about the cost of policing such disclosures, the easiest way to ensure compliance is probably to make failure to disclose sufficient reason to deny or cancel a contract.
Apart from immediately requiring full disclosure, I would suggest that this might be a good area for a council committee to
• find examples from other councils
• to explore ways to work within, or lobby against, rules designed by the state and federal legislature to make it hard to act ethically.
• To consider and bring forward areas where council might wish to consider ethics when purchasing.
I’m sure there will be ethical grey areas, and areas where values differ, but that is what council was elected for, to make hard decisions on behalf of the community at large, and I believe that the majority of cases will in fact be particularly obvious. For example since KBR appears to have silenced its employees from reporting the sewage contamination of drinking water, why would we trust them not to hush up any similar event in Bangalow.
Thank you for considering this matter.
For Further information ...
Apart from the links above, the excellent New Rules project - has a lot of entries regarding local government purchasing rules, many of which refer to local purchasing preferences, and also a section on "Environmental Preferable Purchasing"
Posted by mitra at March 1, 2006 3:33 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.mitra.biz/mt/mt-tb.fcgi/812