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Providing Feedback to the
Australia Defence Association
Thank you for offering your views to the Australia Defence Association
(ADA). Vibrant, informed and objective public debate is essential for
Australia's defence.
As Australia's longstanding independent,
non-partisan, community-based, public-interest
guardian organisation and think-tank on defence and wider national
security issues, we naturally take great care with our contributions to informed public
debate. We welcome supportive or critical feedback on our efforts but
have a legitimate expectation that any proper feedback from you needs to be informed
and as carefully expressed too.
Your responsibilities when offering feedback
We make every
attempt to answer genuine and reasonably expressed feedback. We cannot reply to you, however, if
your comments are in any way anonymous, abusive,
illegal, unduly subjective or otherwise unreasonably deficient
in contributing to informed public debate.
If you intend to offer negative feedback
please check that the facts actually correspond with your perceived
understanding of them. In particular, please check that you are not acting
precipitantly before you have found out or understood what we actually said
in full rather than you just reacting to the often much briefer comments
that were broadcast or published by the media:
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Remember that television and radio
programs are edited by
the broadcaster and newspaper reports can be inaccurate. While great care is taken with ADA commentary such
media editing and misreporting is beyond our control. Long experience has taught us that media editing
or misreporting can lead to misunderstandings, or worse, when our
explanations or other commentary are unduly truncated by the media and broadcast or reported incomplete, out of context
or in a sensationalist manner.
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You especially need to make sure your
feedback has not relied on a single
– and especially a
short – quote in a media report without checking that
your understanding of the whole issue involved, and of our actual
position on the wider matter concerned, is complete and indeed reasonable in the
circumstances. If, for example, you have misheard or misunderstood us based
on a single attributed comment or edited media quote we might actually agree
rather than disagree with you on the issue concerned
Any feedback that you want or expect to be published
must conform with our terms and
conditions for the supply of content. Your provision of feedback
signifies your agreement to be bound by these
terms and conditions.
Minimum requirements for your feedback
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Filtering. Please note that in the interests of informed public
debate, and to weed out fraudulent or mischievous feedback, your
email will be
automatically filtered out as spam
and fail to be delivered unless you:
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fill in the subject line of your email with an intelligible and relevant
entry that assists us in directing it to the best person to answer you;
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have the courtesy and integrity to identify
yourself
appropriately, as we do in our public comment and on this website, by providing as a minimum your
first name and family name,
your telephone number, your postal address and your email address, so
proper discussion can occur by the most effective means (and not
just confined to unnecessarily delayed, time-consuming or subject-limiting email exchanges);
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explain your interest and/or claimed expertise
concerning the subject you are commenting on adequately and in a
polite
and calm manner; and
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ensure that your comments are not
personally derogatory, otherwise offensive or defamatory; are not
in
contempt of a court or otherwise illegal; and are not repetitious, meaningless or containing clear errors of
fact that would or should be known by any reasonable person.
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Non-Delivery of Feedback. Please also note the most common
reasons why your feedback email may fail to be delivered:
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you have not identified
yourself appropriately (as requested in the second sub-bullet point above);
and/or
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you
have not expressed your
feedback appropriately, especially in terms that contribute to informed public debate (as
requested in the third and
fourth
sub-bullet points above).
Feedback addresses
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Our postal address for feedback is:
Feedback, Australia Defence Association, PO Box
320, Erindale Centre, ACT, 2903, Australia
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Your email comment can be
forwarded to
ADA Feedback.
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