Mike O’Connor: Virtue signalling and the scramble to wokeness

A Qld business has been told it can’t be insured if it makes too much money from coal. It’s the latest casualty of virtue signalling, writes Mike O’Connor.

There has been more than one virus attacking the fibre of our society over the past 12 months as virtue signalling has leapt from business to business and executives have scrambled to join the race to be “woke.”

We are all now expected to conform to whatever shallow, vacuous position is currently in vogue and embrace every demand made by the chattering class lest we be condemned on social media.

Mackay small business man David Hartigan is the latest casualty of this crusade by the corporate world to beat its collective chest and show the world it has a social conscience.

His company provides engineering advice to mining companies. “Good on you, mate,” you might say, for creating jobs and doing your bit to help grow the national economy.

Not so in the world of the woke with his insurance company telling him that he cannot make more than 40 per cent of his income from thermal coal mining clients if he wants coverage.

This, of course, is so the insurance company can proclaim to the world that it cares about climate change

The large number of financial institutions now too frightened to cover mining businesses has lessened competition and allowed those still in the business to ramp up their premiums, Mr Hartigan’s increasing by 300 per cent over the past four years.

Can someone please explain to me how screwing a small businessman in regional Queensland is going to save the planet.

It is stupidity writ large and goes hand-in-hand with the insistence by the woke warriors that no one is building coal fired power plants anymore, thus ignoring the inconvenient truth that Germany commissioned one this year, Japan will build 20 over the next five years and the Chinese are building them faster than you can count.

We are a society under attack by woke warriors who ignore an inconvenient truth, writes Mike O’Connor. Picture: Dan Peled

The truth? They can’t handle the truth, preferring to project an image of heartfelt care confected by a marketing consultant while damaging the economy.

Whatever happened to that once treasured Australian trait of declaring in a loud voice that if it looks like bull…t and smells like bull…t, the chances are it’s bull…t? Have we lost the ability to mock poseurs and impostors who wear their false virtue like a robe?

The media was also caned for its un-wokeness this year with university academics conducting a survey which found that 75 per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters were Anglo-Celtic with only six per cent of Indigenous or non-European backgrounds.

Most Australians have an Anglo-Celtic or European background so you might expect this predominance to be reflected in any survey but accusations of racism by the networks were not long in coming along with demands for quotas to be out in place to force them to hire Indigenous and non-Europeans presenters.

None of these accusations were directed at SBS where 76.6 per cent of reporters are non-European and only 0.7 per cent Anglo-Celtic.

Put another way, if you are a blue-eyed, pale-skinned lad by the name of O’Connor, you’ve got Buckley’s chance of getting a job at SBS.

The broadcaster, to no one’s surprise, did not see this statistic as evidence of reverse racism, proclaiming instead that it demonstrated “SBS’s leading role in including and representing the diversity of Australia across our news and current affairs”. Go figure.

SBS also employs two Indigenous Elders in residence to “provide support and cultural empowerment,” has created a voluntary register of staff with what is calls a range of lived experiences to sit in on job interviews to minimise unconscious bias and now gives employees who are promoted $10,000 to spend on “professional development.” How nice for them.

If they need ten grand’s worth of professional development you might wonder how they got promoted in the first place.

When I first set foot in a newsroom all those years ago, I was shown where the toilet and the cafeteria were located and told to find a desk and a typewriter. That was full extent of my employer’s contribution to my cultural empowerment and professional development and while others might differ, I’d like to think things haven’t turned out too badly in spite of an abysmal lack of hand holding, cosseting and empowering.

I get heartily sick of people who claim they deserve special treatment because of their colour, race or sexual preference. Stop whining and get on with the job.

The great tragedy of all this virtue signalling, diversity, empowerment and inclusion is that the young people who will provide our next generation of leaders exist in a cotton wool environment in which they are fearful of expressing an opinion that is not trumpeted by the mob.

If it looks like bull…t and smells like bull…t, the chances are it’s bull…t. Merry Christmas.