Piers Akerman: Sensible debate shot down by the PC CEOs

IF WE are to believe Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, the airline is more interested in putting the interests of the homosexual minority front and centre of its operations, Piers Akerman writes.

THERE was a time when ­Qantas was identified with hero aviators and prided itself on its safety record.

Captain Robert Ritchie, the first and only pilot to run Australia’s iconic airline, had a distinguished war record piloting Catalinas and Liberators, flew for the company and wound up as CEO.

Other trusted Qantas captains the airline boasted included David Massy-Greene, who, in 1989, piloted a Boeing 747-400 on a record-breaking non-stop flight from London’s Heathrow to Sydney’s Kingsford Smith, setting a distance record which stood for 16 years, and Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, who managed to land a crippled Airbus 380 after an explosion smashed an engine and control lines after taking off from Singapore on November 10, 2010. Such talented men built the reputation of the airline as they helmed its aircraft through the skies.

Today, if we are to believe Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, the airline is more interested in putting the interests of the homosexual minority front and centre of its operations, painting an aircraft in the rainbow colours of the sexually confused, sponsoring a float in the annual homosexual parade on Sydney’s Oxford Street, and pushing Joyce’s personal views on the elected government.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, is more interested in putting the interests of the homosexual minority front and centre of its operations, Piers Akerman writes.

Joyce is not alone among Australian business executives who are using their profiles as the heads of public companies in an attempt to bully the government to bend to their homosexual marriage agenda but he possibly is the best known because of his Irish ­accent and his out-and-proud position, a personal position he is absolutely entitled to hold.

However, the reality is that few outside the aviation industry would have known of Joyce until he was appointed to run Qantas, just as the other CEOs who signed a letter designed to pressure the Turnbull government into breaking an election promise would be unknown unless their names were linked to the companies they run.

As much as Cindy Hook (Deloitte’s), Ian Narev (Commonwealth Bank), Andrew Penn (Telstra) and Peter Nash (KPMG) may protest that they signed the letter as a demonstration of their personal commitment to “diversity and inclusion”, their names alone would carry no weight without their significant business affiliations.

The letter was apparently presented to them by the homosexual lobby group Australian Marriage Equality, a misnamed association which is not seeking to achieve marriage equality but to take over the traditional celebration of a union between partners of ­opposite sexes and destroy its millennia-old meaning.

If equality was actually the goal of this lobby group, it should be happy with the current situation in which unions between same-sex couples are given exactly the same legal recognition as marriage.

If the high-flying executives felt so strongly, personally, about the campaign they could join the half-naked Mardi Gras marchers simulating various sexual acts and engaging in the full gamut of stereotypical homosexual representation, without associating their publicly held companies with their gender bending self-promotion.

Qantas Group Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce. Picture: AAP/Paul Miller

But that’s not the way it works anymore. The legions of diversity and inclusion officers who now run their rulers over companies want to ensure there is no diversity of thought on this and other issues and certainly no inclusion of anyone who may hold views counter to the politically correct group think associated with this cause, global warming, tree hugging or the need for ­incessant apologies to dysfunctional members of the indigenous community.

The thought control officers are at large within the federal and state governments, as the thuggish proponents of the Marxist Safe Schools program have demonstrated, their writ runs large within the Australian Defence Force, with its mandated gender promotion policies, and they dominate our educational institutions.

To see the extent to which some of the nation’s senior ­executives are prepared to act like leftist members of the ABC’s biased Q&A audience in order to placate the noisy minority however is to see a nation in cultural retreat.

Last week Cooper’s Brewery directors Dr Tim Cooper and Melanie Cooper were harassed into ­submission by the homosexual marriage posse, which enjoys the support of Joyce and the other signatories of the harrying letter to the government.

Their crime was to let one of their beers be associated with the Bible Society in permitting a respectful discussion between two federal Liberal MPs, Tim Wilson, a former human rights commissioner, a no-nonsense bloke who happens to be a homosexual and a homosexual marriage supporter, and Andrew Hastie, ­another no-nonsense bloke, a former SAS officer who fought against the Taliban and Islamic State.

A sign is seen explaining why Coopers Beer is not being served at the Hollywood Hotel in Sydney. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty

Take a look at the mea culpa video that the Coopers made to express their regret and it would appear that Jihadi John is behind the camera holding up their script. They look like hostages about to lose their heads.

But it is Australia that is actually losing its head to the ­oxymoronic diversity bullies. It should not be lost on the ­nation that the discussion between the two men was civil and that it was attacked with a torrent of hate-filled invective from homosexual marriage supporters who were demanding that any debate on the issue be shut down.

The executives’ letter was polite, but its message was the same as that of the most vilely vociferous internet trolls. No debate.

Perhaps they might consider that their shareholders may hold other views.

As the country wrestles with ways it can keep its lights on and stopping its manufacturers from fleeing to cheaper energy ­nations, senior executives should be focused on the issues that actually matter, rather than looking for vanity ­projects to adorn their CVs.