Peta Credlin: Relentless push for inclusivity is what divides us

New-age thinking is verging on politically correct bullying, writes Peta Credlin. Football teams should play sport rather than play politics, and a war memorial should honour the dead rather than make political statements.

With an NRL team insisting on players wearing LGBTQ pride jerseys last Thursday and Melbourne’s plan for the Shrine of Remembrance to be lit up today in rainbow colours – now abandoned – are you getting the impression that getting on with the job is now playing second fiddle to political virtue signalling?

Add in the Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp, who has now made official a push to junk January 26 as the day we celebrate Australia, and it’s hard to not be disappointed in our so-called leaders who would rather strike a pose than meet their responsibilities.

That’s before we even get to Labor’s new president of the Senate announcing that, because she’s an atheist, the parliamentary day should no longer start with the Lord’s Prayer; although naturally, the acknowledgement of country should stay, even though not all of us are indigenous.

Surely it’s the job of a football team to play sport rather than to play politics; and of a war memorial to honour the dead rather than to make political statements; and of a local government to stick to its job of rates, roads and rubbish — and in Melbourne’s case, clean up a grubby city that’s clogged with useless bike paths and empty offices, rather than show off its political correctness?

But the fact that banks love to advertise that they don’t fund coal mines; and that power companies keep advertising how green they’re going to become; and that even the military stress the importance of climate change, and diversity and inclusion, shows how rampant this new-age thinking, verging on politically correct bullying, has become.

Manly’s Kieran Foran in the Sea Eagles’ Pride jersey. Picture: Manly Digital

Last week even gay veterans told radio stations that they were embarrassed about the politicisation of the Shrine.

And ultra-woke rugby league bosses had to belatedly acknowledge that Manly’s seven Islander players were within their rights to refuse to wear a Pride jersey at odds with their religious or cultural beliefs — which they might have understood if they had bothered to consult them in the first place.

Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance was to be lit up in rainbow colours, in a now-dumped plan.

After Melbourne radio host Neil Mitchell said “no disrespect to the gay community but the rainbow flag can be divisive”, Shrine chief executive Dean Lee questioned “whether the gay pride flag and colours continue to be divisive” because the ADF had accepted gay people since the early ’90s.

But, surely, that’s the point?

With no barriers based on sexuality, why consider splashing a memorial to our war dead with a political statement of equality when that equality has long been enshrined in law?

Sadly, the march of identity politics means that it’s no longer enough to be perfectly accepting of minority rights.

Peta Credlin says new-age thinking is now verging on politically correct bullying.

Increasingly, militant minorities are now demanding that their right to be recognised trumps others’ rights to have a different view.

As a nation, we have never been more diverse, yet we’re now constantly lectured about the need to embrace diversity.

We’ve never been more equal but we’re incessantly told we need to divide ourselves over race or sexuality in order to achieve “true” equality.

And we’ve never been more tolerant, yet we demand intolerance in order to prove it.

Instead of being proud of the easygoing, decent and welcoming society we self-evidently are, we’re told to despise ourselves on account of so-called phobias that are not borne out by the everyday lived experience of most Australians.

Last week, millions of Australians who voted to support marriage equality looked at a footy club forcing footballers to wear gay pride jerseys, and lighting up war memorials with rainbow colours as a bridge too far, and the entry of identity politics into places where it wasn’t warranted, or welcome.

Along with a federal government wanting to divide us by race with its proposed indigenous Voice to the parliament, despite a record number of individual indigenous voices in it, there’s a yawning gulf between woke Australia and the rest of us.

Sooner or later, a backlash is coming from good and decent people who have had enough of being told what to say, do and think.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm.

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Relentless push for inclusivity is what divides us