MBIE In The Business Of... Wokeness

The government body that promotes business, innovation and employment in NZ is no different to MFAT when it comes to DEI and wokeness. They even have special training courses to indoctrinate you.

In a recent episode of McBlog, we looked at the DEI and wokeness of MFAT. MFAT is the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. There was no shortage of it

In response to that episode of McBlog, the Minister of Foreign Affairs released this statement

Since returning to the Foreign Affairs portfolio in November 2023, the Minister has been concerned about the impact that the woke agenda of his predecessor and the Ardern/Hipkins Government had on New Zealand’s diplomacy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Over the past 16 months, the Minister has made clear to successive Secretaries of Foreign Affairs and Trade that he expects MFAT and New Zealand’s diplomats to reflect the agenda of the current New Zealand Government. This has included a determination to remove references to the previous government’s policy priorities from the Ministry’s online publications.

While the Minister continues to hold New Zealand’s diplomats in the highest esteem, he is disappointed that there continue to be outdated references to discretionary legacy initiatives of the previous Labour Government on the MFAT website. He has instructed Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade Bede Corry to review the Ministry’s website and ensure its alignment with the Coalition Government’s agenda.

He looks forward to that review being conducted with a sense of urgency.

Excellent.

But then some of you started forwarding evidence of other government agencies that are rife with this.

Have you heard of MBIE. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is the Government’s lead business-facing agency. They say

“Our contribution to improving the well-being of New Zealanders is summarised in our purpose, to grow New Zealand for all.”

For all. But is that the case?

Under “Our Commitments”, they say

developing and maintaining our capability to engage Māori and understand Māori perspectives.

We’ll come back to that commitment and see how they’re going

Leadership – highly inclusive

Culture – actively inclusive

Structure – remove systemic barriers to inclusion

It sounds like they must have been the Exclusive Brethren before all this

And then - in 2023 MBIE won the New Zealand Rainbow Excellence Awards ‘Simpson Grierson Impact Award’ for the Rainbow People Experience project.

We quickly realise that your gender and your sexuality are MBIE’s business – literally. Interestingly, nobody liked the post. Not a single like. They were finalists in 2022 also.

Through the Rainbow People Experience project in 2020, 3% of MBIE people were members of Ngāi Kahukura Rainbow Network, and 11% identify as LBGTQIA+.

Actually, that 11% figure is almost triple the national average according to the latest Census – the national average is 4% and that includes impressionable older teenagers who probably just like the tag and being different.

But they’ve been pushing it.

Note the lanyards – virtually all the lanyards - and the language – including the critical race theory and “intersectionality”. Watch out for the inclusive religious leaders also.

Did you see all the inclusion for people of faiths? No – I didn’t either.

The diversity and inclusion only goes so far eh. Gender, sexuality, race, intersectionality – but definitely not those Christians & other religious people.

And then come the special sessions. You won’t find this on their website.

This has come from the Official Information Act request earlier this March from MBIE.

But the interesting thing is that it’s basically the Relationships & Sexuality Education type material . RSE in MBIE.

Growing your gender understanding

If you hold your mouse over the Genderbread person, you can find the 4 gender constructs

Apparently, gender identity, gender expression, anatomical sex, and sexual/romative attraction are all different – and all sit on continuums.

Give it a go.

Did they steal this resource from a primary school?

Our next lesson for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

Up with the lingo.

You may have heard a number of different terms used by members of the Rainbow community.

Click on each ‘I’ to learn more….

B is for bisexual – often used interchangeable with “Pansexual”.

A bisexual or pansexual is a person emotionally, romantically, sexually and relationally attracted to multiple sexes / genders, though not necessarily simultaneously. They may not be equally attracted to a particular gender / sex, and the degree of attraction may vary during the course of their life, or they may be attracted towards people regardless of their gender.

Now as an expert in this field, I would just like to correct them here. They’re not interchangeable. They’re different.

Pansexuality is attraction to people regardless of gender, while bisexuality is attraction to two or more genders.

Bisexual is when you are attracted to typically cisgender male and female people. People who understand biology.

Pansexual means you are typically attracted to all genders of people, regardless of sex or sexuality. Confused people.

Very important distinction. If you can understand it 😊

I was interested in the + though, as part of my indoctrination.

+ covers all the other sexual and gender identities not covered in earlier letters.

I never realised “drag queen” was a sexuality or gender. Or cross-dresser. How can you “cross-dress” if you don’t know your sex? Isn’t that the whole point. Cross-dressing?

And heterosexual / straight. That means I’m part of the LGBTQIA+ community. The census must have it all wrong. They said 4%. It should be 100%!!!

By the way, for those of us who understand biology and are put in the made-up category of “cis” – it means

“A person whose sense of identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.”

They then refer people to RainbowYouth

And then there’s lessons on pronouns – what is a pronoun, how do I ask someone what pronouns they use, and why is it important to respect people’s pronouns.

In other words, why should you endorse a fiction and tell a biological lie.

And some commonly used pronouns

They / them / theirs – Shea ate their food because they were hungry – but it’s just one person.

Ze / hir / hir – Tyler ate hir food because ze was hungry.

Use their name. Forget the pronouns! – Ash at Ash’s food because Ash was hungry.

Bob thinks that is stupid and Bob is not going to let Bobself buy into the biological fiction. Bob refuse.

I sound like Tarzan.

And now it’s time to join the church… er group. They have a whole big box of these – just so you can feel really bad if you don’t buy into the narrative.

And remember the video I showed you earlier. Now you know why everyone has to wear one.

Note the wording

Rainbow lanyards are a taonga, available for all MBIE people who support the LGBTQIA+ community regardless of their identity and can be worn on all our sites.

You mean some lanyards are banned from certain sites?

Wearing a rainbow lanyard reflects your understanding and respect of people who have different sexual and gender identities. By wearing a lanyard, you agree to behave in a manner that shows your understanding and respect for this taonga and the rainbow communities…

That’s quite the creed isn’t it. Is there an official handshake?

So diversity equity inclusion is all the rave at MBIE. I know – you probably thought they should just focus on improving the economy and supporting businesses.

During the research for this McBlog, I also came across this news item from January and highlighted by the NZ Taxpayers Union

MBIE spends FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to mix music for trees, prayer, and magic potions to "cure" kauri dieback… playing the sounds of healthy kauri trees to those affected by kauri dieback, in the hope that this approach may help heal them.

And then this story from last August in the Sunday-Star Times

The Government is continuing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on contracted workshops for public servants despite two of the governing parties rallying against them in opposition and saying they were about “white privilege”. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) - the largest ministry - has spent $650,000 in the last four years on the sessions, the Sunday Star-Times can reveal…

Courageous Conversations is run by South Pacific Institutes and its website says its mission is grounded in Te Tiriti and aims to “elevate racial consciousness through interracial dialogue”. Its most frequently contracted workshop to MBIE is called ‘Beyond Diversity’. Its workshops cost between $822.83 and $18,400 - the latter was the most common expense.

MBIE’s chief people officer Jennifer Nathan said under the law the public service has to strengthen its diversion and inclusion capability and the ministry’s investment in this was important.

It enabled MBIE’s workforce to develop skills and capability to reduce unconscious bias, foster diverse and inclusive leadership and develop cultural competency.

But I was interested to see just how diverse and inclusive they really are.

They have a plan.

But there’s a couple of interesting graphs.

They say “We aim to maintain a gender balanced senior leadership cohort (Tiers 1-3) using 40-20-40 (40 per cent male, 40 per cent female and a balance of 20 per cent of any gender). Or if a person doesn’t know their gender.

I had a look and they actually have a disproportionate number of females! 61% female and about 37% male – 2% weren’t sure.

But look – that’s okay. There’s no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, because there’s much more women than men. So all good.

But they are slightly sexist eh.

But the gender pay gap is really really important, apparently. Females are getting paid less than males. Shocking.

Let’s have a look.

European males are getting paid the most – so MBIE are definitely racist misogynists

But hang on

Asians are getting paid less than Maori and Europeans.

And Pasifika females are on the worst rate.

And how can Maori females be earning the same as Asian & Pasifika males. Where’s the gender pay gap.

Wow – this place is racist as.

In fact, let’s look at their staff.

Māori are significantly underrepresented

And if you want to be promoted, don’t be Asian, be European.

The DEI in MBIE is appalling!

By the way, the gender pay gap is completely misleading. It completely fails to take into account a number of key factors. The Cato Institute has an excellent summary highlighting these points:

· The pay gap is the natural economic result of choices men and women make, including how much or how little to work and which occupations to enter.

· On average, women over 40 have three less years of experience than men of the same age. The reason for this should be obvious: Many women drop out of the labor force at some point to rear children. That alone explains about a third of the observed pay gap.

· Women and men also make different choices in terms of occupations and education. Men tend to choose higher-paying college majors and occupations.

· Men are more likely to select occupations with greater financial risk, such as jobs that pay commissions on sales. They are also more likely than women to take jobs with physical risk, such as construction, whose pay is higher owing to the risk premium. Men die on the job at 12 times the rate of women and suffer 50% more injuries at work than women do.

They conclude:

The claim that the gap reflects discrimination assumes that employers would pass up the chance to hire a woman at 84% of what they pay a man with the same training, skills and experience to do the same job. Since labor costs make up a significant share of total business costs, not only would employers have a strong incentive to hire women but discriminators would have a hard time staying in business.

Even a woke organisation like MBIE can’t seem to understand that – and certainly can’t deliver it either.

Just finally, MBIE’s adherence to climate alarmism is present. Their emissions have dropped 40% but that’s only because of COVID and they’re not travelling anywhere overseas much. Which begs the question – why were they doing it in the first place? And should they be.

As I summarised when we did the analysis of both MFAT and also Kiwibank, businesses are adopting “Diversity & Inclusion Training” programs to brainwash their staff into accepting wokeness without question. In truly Orwellian fashion, “Equity and Inclusion” departments are springing up to serve as political offices to search for, stamp out and re-educate any dissenters.

If you don’t believe me, just talk to anyone who works at these organisations and who are petrified at speaking up.

Dare to question, and you will be called “racist”, “sexist” or whatever-phobic. Everyone is walking on eggshells for fear of failing the “woke” purity test.

The threat of “cancel culture” is an ever-present warning that your job, career and reputation are on the line.

But here’s the key thing.

Organisations like MBIE ‘talk the talk’ – they virtue-signal and post all these policies around wokeness – but they don’t deliver on it. They don’t ‘walk the walk’.

Their own stats admit that.

Why can’t they deliver?

Because they don’t really believe in it. It’s just virtue-signalling wokeness. They are fortunately more focused on merit and delivery of best product and services – as is demanded by the taxpayer.

And that’s why businesses in the USA and around the world are finally ditching DEI.

DEI is slowly DIE-ing. It seems to be dragging its tail in New Zealand though.

We need to encourage its demise.