Woolworths is picking a side – the side of the bullies and dividers

Woolworths is playing the bully and setting people against each other, but there’s one way we can teach this arrogant corporate giant a sharp and necessary lesson.

Woolworths is a perfect example of the woke corporate bully – and a hypocrite – so how good to see it getting the slap it so richly deserves.

And how refreshing to have a Liberal Opposition leader again with the courage to fight these culture wars, with Peter Dutton urging customers to shop somewhere more patriotic, like Coles.

The important thing to know about Woolworths’ ban on selling Australia Day merchandise is that it’s political.

It’s political in that dictatorial and destructive way that’s turning Australia into a nation of warring tribes.

Woolworths is getting the slap it so richly deserves.

Woolworths made the politics very clear by lecturing customers who complained: “We recognise the national holiday, but also respect that Australia Day means different things to different parts of the community and want to show respect to all who come into our stores.”

That sentence is so plainly stupid, illogical and false that you wonder how Woolies manages to think clearly enough to stay in businesses.

Other than by putting the squeeze on farmers, I mean.

Yes, Australia Day does mean “different things to different people”, but Woolworths is showing no respect to those customers who think it’s a great day to celebrate a great country, and are shopping for some bunting, or flag-themed napkins or even a bucket hat for their barbie.

Woolworths is showing no respect to those customers who think it’s a great day to celebrate a great country. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Woolworths is just letting an intolerant anti-Australia Day minority stop the rest of its customers from buying the merch they want.

It is picking a side – the side of the bullies and dividers.

More importantly, it’s once more promoting the tribes of Australia, but not the country that gives them all a common home.

For instance, Woolworths promotes the race -based NAIDOC week – of the National Aborigines’ and Islanders’ Day Observance Committee – as well as the Muslim Ramadan and Hindu Diwali.

Woolworths promoted Diwali.

Most infamously, its Big W stores last year played in-store ads promoting Labor’s Aboriginal-only Voice to Parliament until so many customers and even staff complained that they had to switch them off.

Woolworths also donated $1.55m to the Yes campaign without asking permission from its shareholders before giving away their money – which sounds to me awfully like theft.

What’s more, Woolworths also sold a book promoting the Voice, co-written by leading Voice campaigner Thomas Mayo.

Woolworths donated $1.55m to the Yes campaign. Picture: Tertius Pickard

That strips bare Woolworths’ gross hypocrisy, since the Voice also meant “different things to different people”.

In fact, 60 per cent of Australians – almost certainly including 60 per cent of Woolworths’ shoppers – thought the Voice was racist and a menace and voted against it, yet Woolies never banned the sale of this Voice-themed book of propaganda.

No, Woolies stuffed its race politics down the throats of customers who hated it, and now bans Australia Day merchandise for customers who like it.

Like I said, it’s political, and part of a sickness of our elites.

It’s suicidal to disrespect what unites us, while celebrating what divides.

That’s how things fall apart.

I hope it also now costs Woolworths customers.

So who is driving this?

Many business leaders and board members are of a woke tribe themselves, both to prove they’re not just greedy capitalists and because being woke spares them from having to think for themselves.

It’s also dangerous not to be woke because social media warriors could rip into them and cost them nice board jobs with government agencies and “progressive” corporates like Qantas.

Sure, maybe Woolworths is different, and actually filled with rugged free-thinking individualists.

That said, on its board is Holly Kramer, for instance, who is also a director of the Goodes-O’Loughlin Foundation set up by activist ex-footballers Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin, who identify as Aboriginal.

Goodes campaigned for the Voice and is also on Woolworths’ First Nations Advisory Board, which advises the supermarket giant on “reconciliation” but seems instead to be fostering division.

Most of its members identify as Aboriginal even though they also have white ancestry.

Why is Woolworths so keen on dividing people by race?

Why does this overgrown grocer push a race politics that inevitably divides us, and push it so hard that it bans customers from buying merchandise celebrating this country’s national day?

Here again is one of our biggest companies playing the bully and setting people against each other.

It’s also showing disrespect to our nation.

So, yes, boycott Woolies.

Go instead to IGA or to Coles, which still sells Australia Day stuff.

Here is one way that even the humblest shopper can teach an arrogant corporate giant a sharp and necessary lesson in freedom and in loyalty.