NSW Treasury running PC language sessions amid financial crisis
Treasurer Dominic Perrorret says he wants his department focused on lifting NSW out of the COVID-19 recession, not controlling the words employees can use.
NSW
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NSW Treasurer Dominic Perottet has blasted a directive from his own department encouraging staff to use gender-inclusive language in emails as “completely unacceptable” and vowed to flag the issue internally.
The official message to Treasury, revealed by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, encouraged staff to add their “pronoun preference” to email signatures and avoid words like “hi guys” in favour of the phrase “welcome folks” to avoid offence to gender-diverse bureaucrats.
NSW Treasury’s Economic Strategy Deputy Secretary Joann Wilkie sent the advice to staff about how to “create a safe space” in the workplace after a day of internal “Wear it Purple Training”. The training session recommended staff avoid terms like “husband” and “wife” to ensure gender-diverse “heterosexual/cisgendered/endosex” public servants did not feel stigmatised.
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But the non-binary communication raised the ire of Mr Perottet, who said he would address the issue directly with Ms Wilkie to ensure staff can “refer to their spouse how they want to” in the future.
“I know Joann very well and she wears her heart on her sleeve but you can’t be telling people what they can and can’t put on emails like this,” the Treasurer said. Instead, Mr Perottet said he wanted the department focused on getting on with the job of economic recovery from the pandemic, not “political correctness”.
“I don’t care if people call their spouse husband, wife, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, darling, honey, babe,” he told 2GB radio.
He warned that if the PC brigade continued, it would spell the end of Father’s Day, saying inclusivity should not be promoted at the expense of staff members’ self-expression.
“We can’t have people get rid of their own identities for other people’s inclusion. Yes, we want people to feel included in the workplace but we wouldn’t have Father’s Day if we keep going down this path because some people don’t have a father.”
Mr Perottet — himself admitting he did not know what “endosex” meant — said it was not appropriate for staff to be focused on wordplay in the midst of a recession.
Instead, bureaucrats should concentrate on getting people out of “this once-in-100-year” pandemic, he said.
One Nation MP Mark Latham hit out at Ms Wilkie’s messaging, saying Treasury should be focused on “jobs, jobs, jobs” during the recession, not “PC word games.”
In her message to staff, Ms Wilkie said the Treasury’s Pride Network had undertaken LGBTIQA+ training and received recommendations about how staff can create a gender-inclusive workplace.