‘How do you decide when to help people in need?’

INDIGO communities – including citizens of Beechworth, Chiltern, Rutherglen, Stanley, Yackandandah and hamlets – are being encouraged to explore questions of ethics with this week’s release of the first challenge that leads into the Kerferd Oration in Beechworth on July 19.

The oration committee usually hosts a number of related lead-in events, but this year the ‘prompters’ take the form of eight questions.

“These questions will be appearing each week, sometimes in places you least expect, and in the towns across Indigo Shire,” said oration committee chair Michael Evans (pictured).

“This is an opportunity for people of all ages to think and talk in schools, workplaces and at home about current issues and what is the right and wrong way to act – or even if there is a right and wrong way to act.

“Sometimes it isn’t that simple. The questions are about getting us to think about how we think. It is the process, the conversation and the listening, that matters.”

This year’s oration will be delivered by Sydney’s Simon Longstaff, the highly regarded executive director of the Ethics Centre that was originally established by St James’s King Street community in the heart of the city.

“Ethics can be summed up as the thinking process we go through in answering the question: ‘What is the right thing to be doing here?’,” Dr Longstaff said.

“Ethics is not always about the big issues in life.

“Sometimes ethics is about everyday questions that most of us face on a regular basis.

“Things like – should we buy free range eggs even though they cost more?”

An event associated with the oration will examine the question of food ethics in detail.

The oration – now in its 13th year – is a free community event and will be held at George Kerferd Hotel, Mayday Hills, from 10.15am.

This article is reprinted from the ‘Ovens and Murray Advertiser’, which is supporting the oration by publishing each question of the week.