Tele-harassment

Senator Coonan’s initiative sounds good and is indeed so much better than that which existed before the register was launched. But why is the Federal government taking baby steps when dealing with tele-harassers? Why doesn’t the legislation eradicate the scourge of tele-harassment altogether?

Putting aside the exemptions to the register i.e. politicians, charities and market researchers, many parliamentarians would acknowledge that unwanted calls constitutes harassment and that marketers are abusing the individual’s right to peaceful enjoyment. So why then did Senator Coonan settle on a Do-Not-Call register as the solution?

I’d wager that most people do not want to be bothered by unsolicited callers, regardless if the caller is a 70-year-old twice-divorced, balding man from a call centre in Bangalore, India or a 24-year-old, pretty, steel-blue eyed fox with shoulder length raven locks from County Limerick in Eire. Most of us just want our privacy. We want to eat dinner with the family in peace and we don’t want to be disturbed during Law & Order.

That said, wouldn’t it be in the public interest for Senator Coonan to ignore both the lobbyists for the marketing industry and the pagans in the public service who worship at the Golden Calf of Compromise, and throw us all, I mean every single last one of us, out of the reach of the tele-harassers, unless, I repeat unless, we chose to move on to a Do-Call list?

Such a list will put every one of us way beyond the tentacles of marketers until such time as we go to the effort of registering ourselves on a list of those people who openly welcome tele-harassment.

Such an inversion of Canberran logic would better protect our rights to privacy and to peaceful enjoyment. Noting that under a Do-Call regime, our rights can only be extinguished by our actions and not by the commission or omission of actions by others, as is the case with the Senator’s Do Not Call register.

Too simple isn’t it?