Trump’s diversity attack is bad business

Posted on 04 Feb 2025

By Denis Moriarty

Diversity and inclusion

Workplace diversity and inclusion isn't something that can be taken for granted, says the group managing director of Our Community, Denis Moriarty.

I normally try to avoid filling this space with screeds on how fire is hot, cats are disobedient, and water is wet. Occasionally, however, circumstances compel.

The president of the US has just issued a revocation of all government “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs. Next week, dry water. 

Speaking as an employer, I assure you that DEI programs are one of those not-so-rare-as-you-might-think areas where social good and profitability go hand in hand. Any employer who doesn’t have a positive diversity program is leaving money on the table and should be penalised by the share market.

Trump’s people say that it’s unfair to have different standards for different categories of people. Well, there’s certainly something to be said for that position, and I’m not recommending we go back to the times in the 1960s when our mothers and grandmothers were paid much less than men for the same work and were forced to retire when they married. 

I think that in Australia, at least, we’ve come some of the way to accepting the reality of the equal capacities of women. Which carries, of course, the corollary that Australian businesses put in something like a century of not hiring the best person for the job at least 50% of the time.

The invisible hand of the market is always subject to the invisible biases of the boss. If you believe we got it wrong for several thousand years but fixed it completely in the last 50 years and are now prejudice-free – really?

At the time a high proportion of women were ruled out by their lack of qualifications; a lot fewer of them had university degrees, for instance. Where it’s not possible just to rule out disfavoured classes on first principles, qualifications are the second line of resistance.

There, too, though, any good businessperson ought to be able to do the sums. If one of the applicants has gained good school results from private school coaching, and another has similar (or a bit worse) results from fighting through a lifetime of discrimination, the latter should mean more. Otherwise, it’s like assessing the results of the 100-metre sprint without taking into account that one competitor has just run a marathon to get to the stadium.

"If there’s one thing that America has to teach us, though, it’s that no social gain is irreversible."
Donlad Trump
US President Donald Trump has declared war on workplace diversity and inclusion.

Yet another barrier is that the people in power get to set which qualifications are acceptable.

Australia lost billions, over the years by refusing to recognise the overseas qualifications of refugees and migrants; doctors, plumbers and teachers were put on the chicken-plucking line to diminish competition among surgeons. More generally, the elite insisted on measures – competitive examinations, IQ tests – that they and their children were good at, whether or not they were important in the actual workplace.

Our Community group managing director Denis Moriarty.

And what are these actual workplace factors? Trump’s edict says “Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.” 

That’s all very well, but measuring initiative, skills and work in ways that don’t allow for the prejudices of the white penis-having class isn’t straightforward, as evidenced by the fact that no human society has got it right yet. There are, to say it once more, barriers.

I mean, I can see where they’re coming from. In the public service back in the day it was a golden age for men, me included. Not only was there much less competition for jobs, but once you were settled in you could draw on all the talent that had been hammered down.

The glass ceiling was just about at graduate entry level, which meant that your office secretary would have all the skills, performance and hard work you'd otherwise have had to provide yourself. She would uncomplainingly tell you what to do, rescue you when you didn’t do it because you thought you knew better, and offer no threat to your position. It was wonderful – but horribly inefficient, not to mention unfair.

Every country, and every business, needs to catch every piece of talent out there. Finding that talent means taking account of everybody’s life experience – and having a variety of life experience is a strength in itself, providing a range of perspectives on the challenges we face. The Melbourne Club is nobody’s idea of initiative. But as the saying goes, when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. 

I said that I thought Australia had made progress. I had thought that these days appreciation of diversity could more or less be taken for granted.

If there’s one thing that America has to teach us, though, it’s that no social gain is irreversible, and if the Australian government went Trumpist, the 13 ASX 300 boards that are still exclusively male could spread like a spot of bathroom mould.

We were in the era of #MeToo but let’s hope it doesn’t move to #MenToo.

 Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise that helps the country's 600,000 not-for-profits.      

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