Yesterday’s post highlighted the problem of official reporters being too close to the action to maintain perspective. Basically, the official system reads like a flow from the royal commission to the public in a one-way street. This blog intends to be more of a two-way street whereby I exchange data with advocacy groups and others then relay that to all interested parties.

I will attempt to maintain this “lofty” interaction as best I can and will rely on your feedback if, or when, I stray from it.

Please feel free to contact me at any time. For the sake of my mental health, please make “civilised” criticisms, as I do not have a particularly thick skin. I will usually reply, since I will spend a lot of my time on this, being an invalid pensioner and all. Hopefully, I will eventually accrue some people who will help me with the workloads involved.

When information is relayed to me that would be too contentious for this blog, given Australia’s draconian defamation laws, the data can be passed on privately to someone who may be able to make better use of it, with the provider’s permission.

Overall, I will initially focus on the following aspects:

• pros and cons of a royal commission;
• who the commissioners are, what they represent, and their previous history of social actions, judgments, and positions;
• insights into the organisations appearing before the commission, as well as their lawyers and “expert” witnesses;
• contradictions, if any, within official evidence to the commission and feedback to this site from other activist groups and individuals;
• analysis of official media reports;
• ramifications of the Australian commission for strategies in other countries – i.e., a global perspective – since many of the official organisations that will provide submissions are indeed multinational in nature;
• my personal perspective, given a lifetime of activism in this area, and interactions previously with quite a few of the potential major official players; and
• where possible and appropriate, reviews and summaries of feedback will be presented.

All the best and love to hear from you.

TOMORROW: What the official terms of reference really mean.

That’s all I can say

Lewis Blayse (né Lewin Blazevich)