Was Andrew Probyn let go from the ABC for being male and white?

The ABC’s former political editor Andrew Probyn at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

We will probably never know if Andrew Probyn was made redundant for being male and white.

We can be certain, however, that the former ABC political editor faces an uphill task should he seek employment in any organisation that has boxes to tick.

Discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, gender or sexuality is officially sanctioned at the ABC, as it is in every organisation that falls for the poisonous doctrine of social equity. The ABC’s Diversity & Inclusion Plan is a standing agenda item in executive and commissioning meetings, skewing personnel decisions and news judgement.

For those who nurture the quaint idea that candidates should be ranked according to their ability to do the job, the ABC’s policy makes for depressing reading. There is a 15 per cent employment target for members of the culturally and linguistically diverse community, or CALD. There are targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees (3.6 per cent), the disabled (8 per cent) and women (50 per cent).

ABC headquarters in Ultimo, Sydney. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

There are not targets for LGBTQI+ employees suggesting the ABC retains a modicum of decency when deciding which questions it is proper to ask an employee. Members of the LGBTQI+ community should have no fear that they are being excluded, however. The ABC has appointed Mon Schafter, “a proud queer person” as Content Lead of ABC Queer. Schafter, who uses the pronouns she/them, describes the broadcasting of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and World Pride as “one of the most exciting moments of my career”.

The ideology of identity is firmly entrenched in the ABC’s structures. The Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee has become a powerful force, and Diversity Equity and Inclusion is a standing item at every executive meeting. Employee network groups like ABC Belong, ABC Pride and ABC Inclusive are acknowledged in the ABC’s annual report for their role in determining the ABC’s culture.

The diversity, equity and inclusion movement is not the gentle bearer of the civil rights torch that it pretends to be. It is the purveyor of a radical ideology based on critical theory, the dangerous intellectual virus created by obscure social studies professors who have improbably become academic rock stars. They write deliberately impenetrable books full of abstract theory, devoid of common sense, that reduces every human interaction to a contest between victims and their oppressors. It reflects poorly on the due diligence exercised by the ABC’s management and board that they allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into adopting this subversive, post-modernist agenda and direct taxpayers’ money towards the fulfilment of its utopian ambitions.

What were they thinking when they decided that their charter as the national broadcaster gave licence to become an evangelist for structural social change? What evidence can they provide that their diversity equity and inclusion plan is achieving its aim of creating “a stronger, more creative public broadcaster”?

If they thought the pursuit of diversity would end once the prescribed quotas were filled they misunderstood the nature of the crusade. The progressive ideology of diversity equity and inclusion rejects the notion of progress because it anchors itself in perpetual injustice.

The ABC has already overshot the mark by employing 54.9 per cent women, but its Gendered Mentoring Program has been rolled over for another year and the organisation remains a member of Champions of Change Coalition, a global initiative for achieving gender equality. But as David Moinina Sengeh explains in his recent book, Radical Inclusion, the quest for social justice doesn’t stop when you cross the 100 metre line. You have to keep expanding and find a new problem that keeps expanding the inclusion boundaries, he says in an interview with McKinsey Global Publishing. “We must have to keep working harder and harder every day.”

Sengeh’s interview is informative not just for its insights into internal logic of identitarianism, but the platform on which it appears: a newsletter from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, subscribed to by senior corporate executives.

What started as a cult has become the established orthodoxy in the corporate world. The result is that biological attributes like ethnicity or sex which an individual cannot influence have become defining characteristics determining the eligibility for study or employment. The things a motivated person can change, like their complement of skills, social interaction ability or propensity for hard work, are relegated to second place in the list of selection criteria.

Lurking behind the equity movement is the dangerous delusion that its goal is to achieve equality of opportunity. Its effect is the reverse, since inclusivity grants privilege to some and excludes others. Any claim to be an equal opportunity employer is rendered null and void by the official policy of favouring some categories of people and denying preference to others. Discrimination is inevitable once rights are ascribed to groups rather than individuals.

Whether the establishment of ABC Queer, for example, is inclusive or exclusive is a matter of perspective. Members of faith groups that uphold traditional family values may well find such in-your-face diversity deeply offensive. A general contempt for religion within the ABC, and Christianity in particular, has been apparent at the national broadcaster for some time. Yet it is hard to square this with the ABC’s mission to reach all Australians and to accurately reflect the nation’s rich cultural diversity.

Meanwhile the ABC audience continues to decline. The reach of its TV audience both in the city and the country was more 60 per cent a decade ago. Now it’s in the low 40s. It is fair to predict those numbers will continue to fall as the ABC tries to remake itself as a narrowly focused social media content provider and forgets it is supposed to be a broadcaster.

It might build a better rapport with the Australian public if it paid more than lip service to item 4.2 in the ABC’s Code of Practice Present, which requires the ABC to include “a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.” That after all is the only diversity and inclusion target that matters.

Nick Cater is senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre.