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Crikey
Crikey
Business
Charlie Lewis

Lindsay Fox, who just threw a men-only birthday bash, is hiring a diversity officer

In any job interview, it’s ideal to have up your sleeve at least one slam-dunk idea for the role you’re applying for — a project that clearly needs doing, that no reasonable person could object to.

We think we’ve found a job that presented such an opportunity.

Last week, as you may have seen, trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox held his 86th birthday party. Despite the majority of attendees looking mature enough to have been present for the discovery of bread, it adhered to the birthday party rules set by unlikeable eight-year-old boys: no girls allowed.

One attendee was Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Asked about whether it was appropriate to attend such a shindig, Andrews bravely pointed out: “It was held at the National Gallery, let’s be clear. It wasn’t held at some venue where women are not allowed to go. If it had, I wouldn’t have been there.”

Inspiring that the premier of the most progressive state in Australia draws the line at legally enforced segregation. Presumably he was still buzzing from being at a party where merely by arriving in a car not powered by steam he was nearly the most fashionable person (but Eric Bana was in attendance, so it wasn’t a particularly close second place).

Anyway, a tipster got in touch to point out that while Fox was putting together a list of his 150 closest oldest, whitest and most male friends, his company Linfox was making what seemed to be a fairly urgent hire.

Yep, the ol’ Fox is searching for “an energetic, capable, and high-performing diversity and inclusion lead to play a critical role in shaping an inclusive, diverse, and safe workplace for our people”.

If your first pitch for the role isn’t “How about we stop holding extremely public events associated with the company that are exclusively attended by men that uncannily resemble scrunched-up paper”, you might be missing a trick.

The company is no longer accepting applications, but if you missed out, fear not. If you’re all about diversity and inclusion and like a challenge or have absolutely no other ethical framework, LinkedIn is good enough to suggest similar roles.

Perhaps you could take on the job of making sure gender-diverse people feel seen and loved for who they are, while guarding suicidal refugees for Serco. If that’s not a good fit, maybe you could be the person to produce a really sensitive PowerPoint presentation on the different views on Australia Day for behemoth weapons manufacturer BAE systems.

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