Decisions about right and wrong permeate everyday life. Ethics provides a set of standards for behavior that helps us decide how we ought to act in a range of situations. In a sense, we can say that ethics is all about making choices, and about providing reasons why we should make these choices. Ethical decision-making refers to the process of evaluating and choosing among alternatives in a manner consistent with ethical principles. In making ethical decisions, it is necessary to perceive and eliminate unethical options and select the best ethical alternative. The process of making ethical decisions requires: commitment; consciousness; and competency. Good decisions are both ethical and effective. Utilitarianism is one of the most common approaches to making ethical decisions, especially decisions with consequences that concern large groups of people, in part because it instructs us to weigh the different amounts of good and bad that will be produced by our action.
Phillip the names and locations of the Sydney clans and the Aboriginal name of Parramatta, which Phillip had at first called Rose Hill, but later renamed. As with every well-known historical figure, Bennelong’s story is surrounded by misunderstanding, and myths have emerged that he ‘collaborated’ with the British, was ‘taken to London to meet the king’ and was ‘despised by his own people’, all of which have been disproved. As there was little discussion of Aboriginal history in Australia until relatively recently, many revisionist interpretations emerged of Bennelong’s story, a good deal of which misrepresent the truth in order to present the British governance in a negative light, although it was doubtless much at fault. Bennelong was certainly no collaborator, and had been active in resisting the British colonists before agreeing to peacefully join the Sydney settlement in October 1790. Bennelong’s relationship with the British improved significantly over the years (despite Phillip being badly injured with a spear when he went to visit Bennelong, having escaped British imprisonment), and he attempted to find a place for Governor Phillip and his officers in the complicated Aboriginal kinship system. He even, as Watkin Tench wrote, “as a mark of affection and respect to the governor, he conferred on him [his own name] and sometimes called him Been-èn-a (father), adopting to himself the name of the governor. This interchange of names, we found is a constant symbol of friendship among them” (13). In 1872, Bennelong became the third Pacific Islander to be taken to Europe (after Ahu-toru, who Bougainville took to Paris in 1768, and Omai, who visited London in 1774, having met Cook on his second voyage). He would sail 10,000 miles to England and back to his homeland, wear fashionable Georgian clothing, possibly meet King George at the theatre and indulge in tourism, visiting St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.
Bennelong’s importance in Australian history is immeasurable, extending beyond his capacity as an interpreter and mediator, linking modern Australia with the Aboriginal world that existed before 1788. He serves as a reminder of Sydney’s Aboriginal past. Bennelong himself had seen the best and worst of what Europe had to offer, and chose his own civilisation. When the Frenchman Pierre Bernard Milius invited Bennelong to France in 1802, Bennelong replied that ‘there was no better country than his own and that he did not wish to leav
