Don’t expect Australia’s peak science body to come up with a vaccine against ‘wokeness’. They are, themselves, riddled with it.

Last week, the CSIRO announced it was abandoning science to chase the pot of gender confusion at the end of the LGBTQ+ rainbow – a case of spending taxpayer gold in pursuit of the fools’ kind.

In an announcement timed to coincide with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, our Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation said it would be offering staff extra leave for ‘gender reassignment’ surgery.

Our premier science organisation no longer regards gender as a fixed biological reality. Instead, gender is something assigned at birth – often incorrectly, as it so happens – but that can be ‘reassigned’ with a surgeon’s knife and the state-approved adjustment to birth certificates.

While telling the public to ‘follow the science’, our scientific community has decided to follow Caitlyn Jenner.

So-called ‘experts’ tell us that ‘the science is settled’ on climate change, but are happy to do a bit of casual re-writing on the basics of biology.

I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on people demonised for questioning ‘climate science’.

In particular, the CSIRO’s Gender Affirmation policy entitles staff to take time off for medical appointments before and after surgery, and to organise new birth certificates. This is probably annoying for staff who would like extra time off for non-woke activities.

All staff are to be given ‘diversity training’ to make the CSIRO more welcoming for non-binary, trans, and gender-diverse team members.

Finally, CSIRO computer software will be updated to allow researchers to display their preferred pronouns.

It’s all very sciencey.

CSIRO spokesman Chris Gerbing boasted that the Australian government agency responsible for scientific research had given staff permission to ‘be themselves at work’. The public, who are bankrolling the CSIRO, would probably rather its scientists knuckle down and get some work done.

Imagine what a ghastly work environment the CSIRO used to be before the Gender Affirmation Policy came into effect… All those un-affirmed genders out there, forced to walk the corridors and do research without ‘being themselves’. After all, an employer’s chief role is to continuously affirm the gender and sexual preferences of their staff, is it not? Or was it to not ask personal questions?

The Pride@CSIRO Network Leadership, which among other things exists to identify LGBTQI+ staff and their allies, claimed ‘diversity of thought is crucial to doing impactful science’.

Such a pity that diversity of thought at the CSIRO is positively mandated when it comes to gender, yet actively discouraged when it comes to climate, or to vaccine efficacy, or to mask mandates, or to the usefulness of taboo Ivermectin, or to the merits of lockdowns or to any number of real issues that actually matter to Australians the CSIRO are paid to serve.

You can follow James on Twitter. You can order his new book Notes from Woketopia here.