The long retreat from peak woke

The Australian business community is slow to get the message that the wheel is turning away from corporate displays of inclusion in fashionable but not mainstream trends. Reading the international spreadsheet leaves no doubt that peak woke has passed.

The election of Donald Trump is only one indication of a deeper trend. Courts are ruling that discrimination is discrimination regardless of who’s involved. And private equity as well as major public companies are starting to see that when the chips are down, profit will always trump public virtue.

Peter Dutton has sniffed the breeze and on Thursday in Tasmania attacked “woke” bankers for rejecting loans to creditworthy businesses for environmental reasons. Bendigo Bank knocked back financing for a company in Tasmania because it was involved in native forest logging. “Let’s get serious, the banks are there to provide finance to creditworthy customers,” the Opposition Leader said. “I think this whole woke agenda, and the approach of chief executives trying to please industry super funds and proxy voters and the rest of it, has to come to an end.” He is right to argue that banks have a moral and social responsibility to consumers and they have a social licence that they need to honour. It is also true that millionaire bankers who restricted lending on environmental grounds were out of step with ordinary Australians.

How corporate Australia and the broader community respond this year to Australia Day on January 26 will provide a snapshot of where things are at. For several years, the trend has been for big companies to hide their patriotic spirit. Woolworths was a casualty in 2024 when it announced publicly it would not stock or sell Australia Day paraphernalia. Following sharp public and political criticism, that decision has been reversed this year and the retail giant is again wearing the national flag on its sleeve. Woolworths will mandate that all office-based staff have January 26 off to mark the national day. Not all businesses are doing the same. Many have a policy that allows staff to work on a public holiday and take another more suited to their personal beliefs and needs. As we reported on Thursday, corporations including Telstra, Commonwealth Bank and AustralianSuper allow staff to work on Australia Day and other public holidays for another day off – perhaps one culturally important to them – championing the move as a win for employees after flexibility around their time off, despite few taking up the offer.

This approach might make sense for religious holidays and beliefs but the same things do not apply to what should be a day to celebrate our unity as a nation. Arguments about what the date should be are unavoidable, but they should not be allowed to get in the way of marking the day itself. It is another lesson that in the woke world, unity is a commodity that can mean different things to different people. In the US, however, the Supreme Court has made things clear. As Janet Albrechtsen wrote on Thursday, Facebook wound back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after the Supreme Court signalled a shift in how courts would approach DEI. Fashionable trends will no longer be allowed to trump fair dealings.