Peter Dutton announced on Friday that if elected, the Coalition will shutter government-funded diversity, equity and inclusion programs and fire the people who work in those roles, arguing that DEI does “nothing to improve the lives of everyday Australians”.
There’s good reason to ignore this latest salvo. Dutton is a master divider when it comes to First Nations peoples and migrants, and his remarks at the Menzies Foundation did not depart from his typical fare. In addition to his comments about DEI, Dutton took aim at new migrants, suggesting that Labor has created a housing crisis since it “opened the migration floodgates”, and said the voice referendum was “a standout example of Labor’s indulgent spending”.
As we head into an election season we are likely to hear more of these sorts of attacks from the opposition leader and his colleagues.
If it wasn’t an election year, I would be inclined to ignore the comments. However, Dutton is a shrewd politician and having watched how Trump has parlayed venom into votes, I am sure he is betting that this type of rhetoric will resonate with voters. On the back of the voice outcome and the vitriol it helped to unleash, I’m concerned that he might be right.
The opposition leader may be gambling that “commonsense” voters don’t need to see themselves as rightwingers to intuitively agree that there is too much talk about affirmative action, DEI and talk of racism and colonialism.
To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the DEI industrial complex, which too often focuses on “one-time, ‘inspirational’ events to ‘raise awareness’ of inequity” and neglects the more important work of rooting out institutional racism and sexism.
Of course this is not Dutton’s critique of DEI. Conservative opposition to diversity programs is typically based on the idea that taking into account the gender, sexual identity and race of job applicants reinforces inequalities and divisions by punishing white men for problems they did not create.
As the data on Australian workplaces shows, many applicants from migrant backgrounds struggle to even get a job interview. In a two-year study conducted by Kings College and Monash University, researchers found that applicants from ethnic minorities were almost half as likely to receive a call back than applicants with English names when they applied for a non-leadership position. The figures got worse as applicants sought more senior roles. Ethnic minorities applying for leadership positions received 57.4% fewer call backs than applicants with English names.
In addition to this, while we often talk about the under-representation of minorities in senior roles, in Australia, white people are overrepresented in senior leadership roles. Roughly a quarter of Australia’s population is not white, but 95% of senior leaders are white.
It’s pretty obvious that this is an unfair situation. DEI programs seek to level the playing field so that First Nations people and people from migrant communities who have worked incredibly hard but didn’t go to “the right schools” have a fair shot at getting hired because of what they know, rather than who they know, or what they look like. Many DEI programs do this important work – especially when they are led by people with lived experience of minoritisation.
The best DEI programs consider a whole range of systemic barriers to access – race and gender of course, but notably class and physical access as well.
It’s a pity I have to go over this well-trod ground. Because ultimately the fight Dutton and others like him want to have about diversity is a distraction.
The cost of arguing over DEI with every Peter, Sussan and Jacinta is very high. We must remember that it is far easier for Dutton to distract the public with a whipped-up debate on DEI, than it is for him to speak to how his party will address the racism that allows non-Indigenous people to live almost a decade longer than First Nations people.
Dutton and his colleagues in the Coalition say they are worried about Australians who are doing it tough. If this is truly the case, they will have campaign ideas about how to tackle the racism at the root of poor First Nations poverty indicators. Research carried out last year showed that people living in remote Indigenous communities are paying more than double the capital city prices for everyday groceries.
The same is true for the housing crisis which has also made headlines in the last few years. Decades of research tells us that racism plays a role in housing insecurity for Aboriginal and migrant communities. The lack of affordable housing affects everyone, it is especially acute for those who are struggling not just to afford housing, but to access it due to systemic discrimination.
In fact I’m far more interested in how politicians of all stripes will address these fundamental issues than I am in being distracted by spurious debates about DEI. The job of voters is to have conversations on our own terms, rather than allow issues to be framed on our behalf.
With Trump in the White house, Australians will have to focus on what matters most, which is electing a government that will lead with integrity and fairness, rather than division.
• Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)
