Bettina Arndt
March 02 2025
Wow. After all those years of seeing discrimination against men becoming ever more blatant and intense, who would have thought that one crazy dude in the White House could threaten this highly successful feminist enterprise. We will have to see how it all pans out, but Trump’s decision to eliminate all government diversity programs is causing ructions in the mighty international DEI industry which has spent decades creating programs and policies designed to ensure women are advantaged over men, particularly white men, at every turn. Note that Trump’s Executive Order 14171 is titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” Even though most of the howls of outrage from woke folk is focussed on the impact of racial affirmative action policies, merit-based opportunity would be a real novelty for white men working in colleges and government organisations across America who are used to being at the bottom of the heap. A report from the American ABC shows no interest in the notion of “merit-based opportunity” but chooses instead to wail about the impact on a young female researcher working on intestinal parasites in India – supported by diversity-based funding which is now under threat. The news story reports on legal challenges to Trump’s Executive Order and quotes a defiant professor determined to fight back, “We’re doing DEI whether they like it or not.” Well, professor, most people don’t like it. The endless discrimination against men is far from popular – look at that strong vote from young men which helped sweep Trump into power. Australia’s Opposition Leader Peter Dutton named the problem in a recent podcast, saying young men were feeling “disenfranchised and ostracised”, and fed up with being passed over for jobs. As Dutton put it, “They’re pushing back and saying, ‘well, why am I being overlooked at work for a job, you know, three jobs running when I’ve got, you know, a partner at home, and she’s decided to stay at home with three young kids, and I want a promotion at work so that I can help pay the bills at home.’” DEI is responsible for men finding themselves pushed out. And now, finally they are allowed to complain about it. With the new zeitgeist encouraging people to give voice to their discontent about diversity programs, the public mood has even forced corporate America to take notice. Look what’s happening in the corporate world where so many big companies are now choosing to scale back their DEI programs. Last year a host of companies moved in this direction: American Airlines, Boeing, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Nissan, Walmart. Amazon, META and McDonalds took similar measures just last month. Even the public broadcaster, PBS, has got rid of their DEI department. Now that’s a real turn-about for this huge anti-male propaganda unit. Not much sign of change yet in corporate Australia but as they say, “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.” Hopefully the same applies to the anti-DEI sentiment. What’s driving this vibe shift in the USA is clear evidence that DEI is no trivial matter. It’s not just unfair, distorting the productivity of workplaces by eroding meritocracy, creating resentment, and distrust. But it also puts lives at risk. This has been on display, front and centre on the world stage, in a number of startling recent news stories. Take the attempted assassination of Trump at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. How could we ever forget the utter clown show of those bumbling female secret service agents who staggered around looking bewildered, with one struggling to holster her weapon. It turned out that the Secret Service had been working towards a goal of 30% female hires, pushed by Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service Director who was forced to resign over her handling of the fiasco. Then came the Californian fires which drew attention to Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley’s obsession with making diversity a top priority for her department rather than focussing on the core mission of ensuring firefighters were capable of doing their jobs. Peak lunacy came when the head of DEI in the LA fire department sneered at the notion that female firefighters should be able to carry men out of a fire. Naturally Trump drew flak by suggesting that the Washington plane crash could be related to the Federal Aviation Administration recruiting workers “who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative.” Since then the FAA has refused to name the jobs available to such people in their organization, but the evidence is clear that the organization’s diversity push risked bringing in workers unsuited for high stakes, high pressure roles. The reaction to this sequence of events has been a flood of “DEI – EQUALS - DIE” social media posts as people voice the widespread public perception that compulsory diversity is not only mad but dangerous. That’s what I have been hearing for many years: police officers complaining of female colleagues who cower in police cars at the slightest whiff of trouble; army officers nervous about female members of their team who can’t manage the very physical aspects of their role; firefighters reporting on the high injury rate of female colleagues who struggle with their loads; and mining personnel with safety concerns when women with minimal experience are pushed into management roles in their high-risk industry. But there’s another risk arising from decades of DEI distorting our workforces, particularly in the public sector – namely misguided policy driven by biased, feminist management. I’ve written before about the systematic discrimination against men which has occurred in our public service, with affirmative action programs relentlessly recruiting more women than men and pushing them into senior ranks. I reported that 31 of the 96 government agencies now have 70% or more females, including in key policy areas like health and social services. We now have huge swathes of our public service utterly controlled by women, including many feminists captured by anti-male ideology. These are the people shaping our public policies, spending vital taxpayer funded resources and drafting our laws. This means when it comes to policies that should be saving lives, they are only interested in one side of the equation - saving women. One obvious example is the domestic violence bureaucrats pouring billions of dollars into resources they claim protect women from dangerous men, whilst utterly ignoring the safety of men and their children who are at risk from violent women. Law professor Augusto Zimmermann exposed this shameful state of affairs in his powerful lecture at the Restoring the Presumption of Innocence conference last year. Our key research funding body, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is massively supporting women’s health research, whilst neglecting work that could save men’s lives – despite women living on average four years longer than men. Look at this revealing graph from James Nuzzo – who blogs at The Nuzzo Letter. But the most striking example of biased bureaucracy is the utterly shameful distortion of our suicide prevention policies which for decades have wilfully refused to target men – even though 7 of the 9 people who kill themselves each day in this country are male. The National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement identified 15 priority populations yet didn’t target men as a priority group. The latest strategy mentions specific groups of men, such as indigenous and LGBTQI men, but no programs targeting the broader population of ordinary men. It’s no wonder Australia’s suicide prevention policies are such a dismal failure. Over the last two decades (2000-2021) suicides worldwide dropped by 6% but in this country they went up by 39%. Analysis by the Australian Men’s Health Forum in 2020 showed that 4 of 5 beneficiaries of suicide prevention policies were female, and little has changed since then. And now we have Coroner’s report data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing that among men 25-44, the biggest cause of suicide is now “problems in spousal relationships circumstances”. It is appalling that our suicide prevention programs are ignoring this key trigger for male suicide and refusing to provide services to support men going through this process. It's no coincidence that these suicide prevention bodies are staffed almost entirely by female health bureaucrats, women who have no interest in saving the lives of ordinary men, and no intention of opening the can of worms that is our biased family law system. This system is a key part of the reason why these family men are killing themselves in such numbers – a system designed to chew men up and spit them out. Any decent suicide prevention program would ask what can be done to protect men from this fate. None of that is going to happen whilst biased female hands are steering the ship of state. Dismantling DEI in our bureaucracies would be a small, but critical step towards a policy framework that cared about women AND men. But given the grip of feminism on all Australian institutions, we’re a very long way from that right now. Yes, ideologically driven diversity programs are killing people. We must promote this fact to ensure the demise of DEI in Australia. But first, with the Federal election coming up we need to alert politicians to growing public outrage over the ongoing scandal of Australia’s failed suicide policies. You MUST help. Arguably this is the issue that best illustrates the scandalous indifference of the political class to the plight of men. All it takes is a few minutes of your time to contact your local politicians using our draft letter system. Click this link and you will be given details of your local MP and a draft letter to send to them. It would be great if you could also send this to your local Senators and the Cross Bench Senators. We are told the Opposition is considering
a major revamp of suicide policies with a focus on men. Now’s the time to put
the pressure on for some policy announcements to help convince people that,
despite the pandering of the Morrison government to the feminist lobby, the
Opposition might now deserve their vote.
Bettina Arndt
November 24 2024
This week’s arrest of Alan
Jones shows just how we have strayed from the principles of justice,
with our media and police heavyweights flagrantly ignoring the rules we have in
place to ensure a fair trial. This has all the earmarks of a hit job, led by
feminist journalists determined to take down the man who for decades was king
of the airways, hugely influential, with a massive following. Centre stage is SMH journalist Kate McClymont revelling in
her ongoing #MeToo campaign targeting prominent men. She was glowing as police
acknowledged that her four-year vendetta against Jones had prompted the police
campaign to go after him. In classic trial by media, McClymont published an
article last year full of graphic allegations of sexual misconduct. The NSW
government followed up with a task force, which has spent months beavering away
digging up dirt, with the help of McClymont’s efforts to recruit more
“victims”. Do taxpayers really approve of the spending of hundreds of
thousands from our police budget trying to prove some decades-old claims of
gropes of bottoms or other bits of husky young men by this 83-year-old man? If
Jones was not such a prominent figure, would police have expended these
resources on allegations of this nature? For the #MeToo mob, Jones is the biggest scalp of all. “The
left has long despised Jones for his contempt for progressive politics,
uncompromising social attitudes and influence over national and state
politics,” wrote Aaron
Patrick in The Nightly. “The Get Jones campaign is nothing new in my life,” commented Jones
last year, as he emphatically denied the allegations when they first surfaced. The presumption of Innocence? What a joke. This week we saw
the media alerted in advance of Jones’ arrest and public shaming, which allowed
the feral journalists and photographers to go on the rampage, staking out his
apartment and police station where he was ultimately charged with 24 charges of
indecent assault and sexual touching. There have been press conferences, with
the Assistant Police Commissioner commenting the bravery of the “victims” and
the Commissioner Karen Webb keen to encourage more: “There is no better time to
come forward.” Even The Australian descended into the
gutter, leading their news with a tragic video of Alan Jones pursued by the
media scrum. And now he is out on bail - but under house arrest, which is a
most unusual, draconian move, my legal friends inform me. At the heart of it all is this extremely popular man who has
spent much of his life getting up the noses of the chattering classes by
campaigning for causes they despise, while endlessly putting himself out to
help charities. Alan Jones first interviewed me over 40 years ago, and he’s
supported me and my work ever since. He was one of the very few to give me a
platform after attempts to cancel me. I’m incensed at this gleeful targeting by the State and the
media of this decent, principled man. And the underlying message makes me
shiver. We are being shown that no one is safe in a system where accusers are
celebrated as victims and allegations suffice for evidence. The bigger they
are, the harder they fall; and the louder the celebration. It was timely that just this week I interviewed a former NSW
police prosecutor who contacted me because he was concerned about our
dysfunctional justice system. Richard McDonald spent 22 years in the police,
mainly working as a legal consultant in the sex crimes squad. He’s now a lawyer
in private practice in
Sydney. Richard revealed a system captured by ideology, where police
are discouraged from properly investigating sexual assault and domestic
violence claims. “Let the court decide” is the adopted philosophy, as even the
most dubious allegations end up before overworked magistrates, judges and
juries who often aren’t presented with the evidence they need to properly
assess the validity of these very serious complaints. I’ve made two videos with Richard, the first talking about
sexual assault claims and the next domestic violence allegations – the two
crimes now dominating our criminal justice system, largely due to feminist
tinkering with our laws to try to ensure more male convictions. Here’s our discussion of sexual assault. Fabricating rape But back to my riveting conversation with Richard McDonald.
His revelations blew out of the water some myths being promoted about these
crimes – such as the notion that false allegations are rare. In his initial
letter to me, Richard explained that, in his role as a legal consultant to the
sex crimes squad, he analysed hundreds of sexual assault matters to determine
whether there was a reasonable prospect of a conviction. His startling
conclusion: “I provided advice in the range of over 90% not to commence
proceedings because of the complicity of women involved in sexual
relationships with men and their motives to lie.” In the video you will see Richard talking at some length to
me about women’s motivations to concoct or fabricate allegations: including
embarrassment after regret sex, saving face when a casual hook-up runs counter
to the woman’s cultural beliefs, or the “scrum down” when female friends help
rewrite the history of what happened. Richard is a man who has never been afraid to stick his neck
out. Asking around, I discovered he had quite a reputation for fearless advice
in his role as police prosecutor. He refused to support applications for AVOs
which he felt were just to assist family law matters. Domestic violence has taken over In the second part of the main video, on domestic violence,
Richard tells the story of turning up at the scene of a domestic violence
dispute and finding the man in handcuffs. He asked whether anyone had
interviewed the man to learn his side of the story. Surprise, surprise. No one
had bothered. As we know, this is standard practice. But as Richard points
out, official domestic violence policy requires police to determine “whether
sufficient evidence exists to support criminal charges.” That is simply
not happening. The system has been totally perverted, he told me, bemoaning
the fact that most domestic violence matters end up with the man in court
without any attempt to examine his evidence, facing overworked magistrates who
basically rubber stamp the AVO application. Even with alleged sexual offences, he reports it was an
uphill battle to try to ensure both sides of the story were properly heard
before the accused was charged. Like the man who was up on child pornography
charges, based on photos of naked children. Richard discovered the photos in
question were of the man’s own kids, amongst many taken as part of normal
family life. They were innocently produced. But the police hadn’t bothered to
put these photos in context and ignored the fact there was a lawful defence.
He’s pessimistic about the chances of changing the system,
given the disproportionate influence of feminist stakeholders, including the
many domestic violence support groups. We discussed a story I heard last week
from a man who achieved a miracle in getting his ex charged with making false
allegations – with the help of a very senior police officer. But then she went
along to the Domestic Violence Service Management who, even when presented with
evidence of the criminal charges against her, still choose to help the woman
and child hide from the father. Richard confirmed this bias is commonplace. It says a great deal that this experienced former police
prosecutor has chosen to speak out about his concerns that the system is out of
control. He was shocked by the antics of his former bosses in relation to the
Alan Jones case this week, posting on his Facebook page his
concerns about senior police commenting publicly about live cases, and
referring to witnesses as “victims”. “The police just seem to want to
keep reversing the onus of proof,” he wrote. But many current officers of the court no longer appear to
sufficiently adhere to the principles and traditions underpinning our justice
system. The NSW Chief Prosecutor Sally Dowling is fighting a mighty battle trying
to restrain judges who, fulfilling what they perceived to be their duty to the
proper administration of justice, chose to speak out about cases being sent to
trial unsupported by sufficient evidence. She’s made three complaints about
judges to the state’s judicial watchdog. And only last week, Lucy McCallum, Chief Justice of the ACT
Supreme Court, spoke at
a legal conference about not understanding why jurors “find it so hard to
believe” allegations of sexual assault. If the Chief Justice is pushing a
believe-all-women line, what hope is there for the accused man appearing before
her? And then there’s the state of our family law system. Those
of you who attended our Restoring the Presumption of
Innocence conference will
remember Nadine Taylor, who took part in our final Call to Action session.
Nadine has spent 20 years advocating for family law reform in the UK, working
recently as a professional “McKenzie Friend”, providing support for people
representing themselves in court. Here’s a little of her speech: For the past year she’s recently been helping a friend in
Australia who’s fighting a massive family law battle, complete with the usual
onslaught of false allegations of domestic violence. She wrote to me summing up this experience: “I never thought
I would say this, but the Australian family court process makes our UK
court process look positively caring, compassionate and efficient.” She
mentioned particularly the AVO system “sought with alarming frequency and
lethal application in what appears to be pretty much most cases, issued by
police officers without any background checks or evidence, and then exploited
to prevent contact with children.” Nadine concludes that even though the UK system has problems
“I would rather be a father in that system that the Australian one, and I would
use every breath in my body to fight against the UK implementing such a system.
The Australian family court process is far more complex and unnecessarily drawn
out than it needs to be, unless of course the purpose is to wear you down to
the extent you give up and walk away, financially and emotionally bankrupt
minus your children and sanity.” It is not an overstatement to say that our system of justice
is under serious threat in Australia. It is so very important that we make our
voices heard about where this is all heading. Before it is too late.