Somebody Think Of The Children

I attended an all day seminar today where there were a couple of points raised in relation to these types of issues.

The seminar evolved to the point where it was noted that “all organisations develop their own internal culture” followed by an unconfirmed statement that “until recently (Australian) Customs were (or are) controlled by Catholics” and (my reading not related to the topic of the seminar) follows that decisions made whether to confiscate a film (or not) ( which is a discretionary one not endorsed by the “OFLC” for titles that haven’t been rated in Australia -see the “OFLC” website where they state that they will not intervene and that customs should for the most part determine these things themselves ) are based not on that of a “reasonable adult” but possibly by the religious sensibilities of bureacrats in charge of seizure decisions Australian Customs make.

If (for example) those in charge of Australian Customs were to be of the Islamic faith I suspect the decisions could be even harsher.

There was also some discussion of the cost of labour where it was noted that “labour” (people) in china are cheap and that whereas in Australia if two miners are stuck underground (as happened recently) there will be a costly inquiry into safety. In China as I understand it it’s simply regarded as an “unfortunate incident” involving cheap sources of labour.

Bob

By Bob Bain on Oct 2, 2008

Addendum to this. In China their customs department can even seize “illegal bibles”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/18/2338088.htm

China customs seizes 300 ‘illegal’ Bibles

Posted Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:24am AEST
Updated Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:23am AEST

Airport customs officials in south-western China have seized 300 Bibles from four Americans, saying it was illegal to bring the books into the country, a US missionary among them said.

Pat Klein, who runs a group called Vision Beyond Borders, said customs officials confiscated the Chinese-language Bibles after the group flew into Kunming from Thailand.

The officials were not immediately available for comment and a police official in Kunming said he was not able to confirm the seizure.

Mr Klein, a 46-year-old from Wyoming, said he has brought more than 10,000 Bibles into China over the past 20 years but has never had books seized before.

“We’ve not done anything wrong,” he said by telephone from Kunming. “We’re not trying overthrow the government or disrupt the Olympics.”

The group of four Americans, which included a 15-year-old boy and his 78-year-old grandfather, were refusing to leave the airport on Sunday night without the books.

Officials told them they could have the Bibles back when the left the country and in the meantime they could take one each with them, Mr Klein said.

“If China’s going to say they have freedom of religion, why take our Bibles?” he said.

China’s Marxist constitution provides for freedom of religion but in practice the ruling Communist Party restricts independent worship by forcing groups to register.

By Bob Bain on Oct 2, 2008

Here’s the current organisational chart for the Australian Customs sevice..

http://www.customs.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/orgChart.pdf

Michael Carmody CEO

I suggest the following people may be involved in decisions regarding the seizure of films and videos which are usually perfectly legal for sale and viewing in most Western democracies…

Marion Grant Border Enforcement
Roxanne Kelley Enforcement and Investigations
Jeff Buckpitt Intelligence & Targeting
Demetrio Veteri Law Enforcement Strategy

It should be noted that today’s seminar involved strategic decision making so perhaps Demetrio Veteri is the person to contact with regards to strategic decisions regarding the seizure of films that some (seemingly misguided)people overseas seem to regard as “funny” or even entertaining, but which no doubt some of those on this list regard as akin to toxic waste or ammunition.

Please note that “external forces” influence strategy and there is possibly an internal “balanced scorecard” to record these influences. I have a formal definition of strategy from today’s session which is defined as:-

“Strategy is a set of hypothesses about cause and effect expressed as “if-then statements”.

Perhaps external forces should be a feature of their balanced scorecards !

refer…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_scorecard

…where the term is aligned with “business” but government agencies are in my view a form of “business” and most certainly should be attuned to a balanced scorecard approach.

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The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a performance management tool which began as a concept for measuring whether the smaller-scale operational activities of a company are aligned with its larger-scale objectives in terms of vision and strategy.

By focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on the operational, marketing and developmental inputs to these, the Balanced Scorecard helps provide a more comprehensive view of a business, which in turn helps organizations act in their best long-term interests.

Organisations were encouraged to measure—in addition to financial outputs—what influenced such financial outputs. For example, process performance, market share / penetration, long term learning and skills development, and so on.

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Perhaps we need a presence on their balanced scorecard. Perhaps they should publish it !

Sadly Mr. Veteria doesn’t appear to have an subordinates or assistance (unlike his colleagues) so I believe some community assistance may help relieve the government budget of adding extra staff to assist in this important area.

By Bob Bain on Oct 2, 2008