Until recently the acronym DEI was unknown in Australia. Now it’s become one of those annoying Americanisms like vacation, SUV and soda which are steadily invading our language. Like ‘woke’, its meaning has been inverted by malicious actors seeking to confuse, divide and conquer.
DEI means diversity, equity and inclusion. Nasty, nasty words aren’t they? According to some, they have the ability to crash planes, cause wild fires and bring down entire societies. Of course there’s no evidence for any of this, but evidence is so 2024.
Never one to miss an opportunity to copy a bad American idea, Peter Dutton used his first major speech this year to attack ‘culture, diversity and inclusion’ advisers in the Australian public service, presumably as a softening-up attack on the public service in general, in the vein of the hi-tech vandalism Elon Musk is currently undertaking in the USA.
As per Gina Rinehart’s script, a ‘bloated’ public service is the problem, never bloated billionaires.
Back to the dark ages
It seems wealthy, able-bodied, heterosexual white people are so threatened by the tiny gains made by people who aren’t exactly like them in recent years that they need to destroy the entire idea of responding to historical and other inequities, which began in earnest with the American civil rights act of 1964.
The problem for business people and politicians arguing that diversity is somehow damaging is that science suggests the complete opposite. That well-known hotbed of radical woke leftards, Forbes magazine, has repeatedly quoted long term research from McKinsey and elsewhere that shows significant financial advantages to companies that pursue equality of representation in terms of gender, ethnicity and other markers.
The effect is even more pronounced when extended to boards of directors, for example companies in the top quartile for board-gender diversity are 27 per cent more likely to outperform financially than those in the bottom quartile. Companies in the top quartile for ethnically diverse boards are 13 per cent more likely to outperform than those in the bottom group.
This doesn’t just apply to America – the database for these long term studies was built from 1,265 companies acting across 23 countries. Beyond dollars and cents, the research also shows much better environmental and social impacts associated with companies that have better DEI scores.
Lessons from history and the natural world
It’s worth remembering that many of the most significant people in history, even Western history, were not white hetereosexual men who called themselves Christians.
The pioneering computer scientist and codebreaker Alan Turing did more than most to help the Allies win World War Two. Would a gay man like him have any chance of a government job in Trump’s America, if he was open about his sexuality?
Black women including the mathematician Katherine Johnson were crucially important in getting humanity to the moon. Would she get a job in an organisation led by Nazis and Nazi apologists?
Someone like the great British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who had motor neurone disease, wouldn’t have been able to work from home or access the support tools he needed under new rules proposed for American government workplaces.
Diversity in the natural world is always associated with greater vigour, and better resistance to disease and other threats, and humanity is no different. Those who advocate racial ‘purity’, violence and cruelty as an approach to life will always be defeated ultimately by those who draw from a wider pool. That’s the true law of the jungle.
The fact is that the money-worshipping, sexist, racist cultists of our era are fundamentally unmoored from reality. Ignoring the rules of physics and the lessons of evolution and history don’t make these things go away, they just hasten your own demise. The only question is how many others they will take with them.
Diversity is strength.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
