In the world of desperation and not knowing what to do about safety, we get this: https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/about-the-tac/media-room/news-and-events/2025/new-tac-initiative-brings-road-safety-to-the-salon-chair

One of the key foundations of effective counselling/listening is NOT to dictate agenda. When one dictates an agenda in any conversation, listening ceases.

So what we have here is, the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) (yes, the ones that brought you ‘bloody idiot’ and ‘zero vision) now seeking to manipulate the agenda in hairdresser salons and barbers.

Can you imagine, you come in to your hair dresser and the first question is: ‘are you wearing seat belts?’ or, ‘how many accidents do you want today?’

When it comes to safety, it seems there are no ethical boundaries to manipulation, coercion and immoral conduct, in the name of good.

Just listen to the nonsense language here by the TAC:

TAC Head of Community, Jacqui Sampson, said an everyday conversation in a salon chair was an opportunity to save a life, and the campaign would create community champions for a safety-first culture on the roads.

Oh, here we go, safety saves lives, get out your heroes and champions of safety, while you cut hair. And, the claim for this as an ‘innovation’. No, it’s not. It’s manipulation, propaganda and indoctrination.

One of the foundational characteristics of getting a haircut is trust. No-one wants to visit a hair-dresser or stylist pushing an agenda. If people do want to chat in the chair, and if the hairdresser is skilled in listening, then, it is the client that should chose the agenda NOT the TAC or a barber!

Of course, the article then progresses to the TAC favourites of statistics, numerics and metrics. This again from the TAC:

Ms Sampson said the research findings reinforced the importance of finding new ways to educate people on the importance of wearing a seatbelt, like with the Cut, Colour, Click initiative.

This is NOT education. It is indoctrination and, places the needs of the TAC above real-life engagement, to manipulating an experience in hair salons. Only Safety could be this unethical.

Exploiting a relaxed and trusting experience to present an agenda is NOT how to foster trust, care and ‘attending’ to the other. Nor, does any of this respect persons.

Then we get this:

“We need to come from all angles and have full community commitment if we are to turn around the unacceptable level of road trauma we are seeing – everyone needs to be a road safety hero.”

So, we justify the invasion of someone’s space with an agenda by Safety and then we get the classic ‘safety hero’ stuff. Only the TAC could think that any of this was a ‘good thing’. Ethically, this is profoundly immoral. This is what happens when you have an archetype (Safety) that thinks it can do what it likes, justified by its agenda.

I went to the hairdresser this week and we started with ‘how are you and do you want to talk about anything’? I stated that I had a tough week with personal issues and I didn’t want to talk about them. I said, please just cut my hair.

Can you imagine then if a question came: ‘have you been wearing your seatbelt?’ That’s the last time I would visit that place. When the hairdresser carries an agenda into a conversation, you know they have no interest in listening.

All of this is consistent with what Safety thinks works: telling, telling, telling.

Well done TAC, you have demonstrated once again that you have no idea about Ethics or moral meaning, no idea of respecting persons and no idea that manipulating agenda in any social context is NOT justified by whatever you think matters most.

I know, lets next get psychologists, social workers and counsellors in on the con and lets not call it the ‘Cut, Colour, Click campaign’ let’s call it ‘couch, Freud and safety psychosis’. Can you imagine, you want to chat to a counsellor about a family issue and all the counsellor seeks to do is talk about seatbelts.

Well done TAC, you have demonstrated once again that you have no idea about Ethics or moral meaning, no idea of respecting persons and no idea that manipulating agenda in any social context is NOT justified by whatever you think matters most.

Oh yes, and make sure you download your conversation cards, factsheets, and propaganda materials. Everything you need to make sure you tell and don’t listen. A great recipe to ruin your salon business because your clients will leave in doves and find somewhere else where they can relax and not be preached at by Safety.