Waking up to the absurdity of woke

Dark clouds: Melbourne is named after an advocate of slave trading so really should be renamed. Picture: Alex Coppel.

I woke up on Sunday to a woke community that is starting to drive me mad. This does take some explaining, but please, dear reader, let me take you on my journey.

First, I read that the leaders of Moreland City Council no longer like its name. Apparently, it has a connection to a slave trader and therefore needs to be changed. So be it. But, dear reader, we need to be very careful here. Melbourne is named after an advocate of slave trading. Let’s change its name. History is a mine of information and we should never be a slave to our ancestors, or their beliefs. Melbourne was named in honour of William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, who was a strong supporter of slavery, calling Britain’s abolition of slavery a “great folly”.

Perth was named by Sir George Murray after his home town in Scotland. Well, guess what? He had a secret. Murray’s private life was exposed to public scrutiny in 1824 when Lieutenant-General Sir James Erskine brought an action for £20,000 damages against him for having sex with his wife, which in those days you could sue for. The case for Erskine was that by forming a clandestine sexual liaison with Lady Erskine in Paris, Murray had destroyed a happy marriage and betrayed a friend and fellow officer.

What a shocking revelation. Perth must be renamed. Such behaviour amounts today to sexual abuse.

Brisbane, named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, must be renamed. He was responsible for the murder of Indigenous Australians. Why hasn’t anybody cried out about that? His record is a disgrace.

By the way, I have not had the time to delve into the backgrounds of the premiers of our states. For the record, my background is not good. Convicts.

I have only just started. I think all our capital cities need to be renamed. And while we are at it, most roads and towns, too. These are all named after developers who most likely had ancestors who had something wrong with them. Women haters, anti-gay, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-white, anti-black, anti-Asian, smokers, alcoholics, you name it.

Then, of course, we have the story of Coon cheese. Coon was the surname of the man who created the brand. But it had to be changed because it was offensive to people who could not see it was just a name, not a slur.

Transition: Coon and Cheer share shelf space for a short time.

So if Coon cheese had to be changed, then we should change Coonawarra. It perhaps could be Cherryawarra. And if we do this then all names of colour need to be changed. No more whites, blacks or browns. They can all be called blange.

The following extract earlier this year from the Victorian government request for applicants for the Zoological Parks and Gardens Board raised many questions for me. The end of the minister’s request for board members was:

“The government is encouraging applications from women, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples, people with a disability, young people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, gender diverse and intersex people.”

Now, dear reader, of course we should not discriminate. We should accept applications from all people regardless of faith, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. But should we positively discriminate? And, quite frankly, what is diversity about? The woke community will tell you some nonsensical thing.

I will come back to this and the problems it poses. But first: Why did the advertisement not mention seniors or middle-aged people? Who are young people? Second, if one has a linguistically diverse background do they need to be fluent in English? Why would a linguistically diverse background lead to being good in diversity? For example, if I am a white Aussie but speak five languages (because I was born in Lebanon) does that qualify?

How does one ask if someone is gender diverse? For me, with my accent, if I were to ask if one were inter sex, it would most likely come out sounding like “are you into sex?”. We all know where that would end up.

Hear me out. First, women are asked to respond. Fifty per cent (or thereabouts) of the population is female. Why not men? Then we go into many sexual preferences and gender differentials. Why not heterosexuals? Thankfully, society now accepts those who are gay, lesbian and transgender as just run of the mill. No one today would even think to ask a person’s sexuality in an interview, nor care. Indeed, if they did, it would be an offence. So why promulgate it?

By doing so, we leave ourselves as a society in a huge quandary. What was missing from the above government advertisement? Religion and ethnicity (apart from Indigenous).

My point is we must not discriminate. The idea of positive discrimination for the so-called cause of “diversity” is a nonsense and the sooner we call it out the better. What diversity does is escalate the divide. It actually achieves the opposite result intended.

Further, trying to meet the “diversity” rules is embarrassing for all. Why should someone try to demonstrate that he or she comes from a minority group and, in any event, what does that mean in the end? We are all Australian, after all. Are we as a society deciding to exclude the majority and are we, by seeking to include all the minorities, being twisted and turned by trying to work out who are the minorities, how we “include” them and how is this achieved practically given all the laws around discrimination and employment?

Finally, where does this end? We are all individually a part of a “minority” if we looked at our individual characteristics. That is why we have a democratic society – to give a voice to the majority, whatever diverse background they come from. That is the beauty of our democracy. And the leaders/parties change often. We do not need an unnecessary special vote for minority issues. They will otherwise never end. And we can never change the past. It is what we are made up of. Let’s accept it and understand it.

Francis Galbally is a Melbourne businessman.