In a startling development this week, Paul Barry suggested that the ABC should review its relationship with the AIDS Council of New South Wales (ACON) and the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) that ACON run. In what Barry called ‘a difficult conversation we need to have’, he presented a range of points based on research conducted by citizen journalist Kit Kowalski, that cast doubt, brace yourself, on the impartiality of the ABC.

I went to a seminar earlier this year held by Kit Kowalski; you can listen to it here. Her contention is that the Australia Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) run by ACON is being used as a form of ‘agency capture’. Agency or industry capture is a form of corruption ‘where a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the interests of an ideological group’.

ACON was formerly a health charity for gay men, but like many gay charities, it now has the aims of ‘trans rights’ at its core. ‘Trans rights’ are not an uncontested set of demands, particularly the political aim of ‘self ID’ – which is the right of men to be legally recognised as female on demand. The inclusion of biological men in women’s sport is another contested ‘right’ of the ‘trans’ political movement.

Under the voluntary AWEI system, organisations gain ‘points’ for being compliant to the particular ideology of ‘diversity and inclusion’ that ACON promotes. The points are gained for participating in things like Wear it Purple day, hiring LGBTQ+ advocates, holding pride events, and using approved forms of language. The AWEI is essentially a competitive ranking system where organisations are invited to ‘game’ for free. Players are, of course, welcome to pay ACON for seminars where they can learn how to compete for the ‘gold stars’ more successfully.

Paul Barry showed documents that Kowalski gained under information requests, strongly indicating that the AWEI is being used as a capture tool to influence editorial content and recruitment policy at the ABC. Language style guides are also a key target of influence.

Paul Barry noted that both the ABC and their Managing Director, David Anderson have won ‘gold’ under the AWEI points system that ACON provides. I regret to inform you that our dear Aunty has a gaming problem, and we will need to stage an intervention.

A potential breach of impartiality is not a small matter for our public broadcaster, as the ABC are legally bound to impartiality in the service to the people who fund them, the taxpayer.

In the UK, similar accusations of a breach of impartiality were levelled at the BBC by BBC podcast ‘Nolan Investigates’ in regard to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions Workplace Equality Index. According to the AWEI site, the Australian workplace index was drawn ‘from the rich experience, expertise and methodology of the Diversity Champions Workplace Equality Index published by Stonewall in the UK’.

The BBC pulled out of the Diversity Champions scheme after the Nolan investigation. More recently a spate of organisations have dropped the Diversity Champions scheme over concerns that Stonewall directions may send them to the wrong side of discrimination legislation.

Alison Bailey, a black lesbian lawyer, has been suing her employer and Stonewall in relation to discrimination she experienced in the workplace and bullying she endured online. Bailey won a claim against her employer, but failed to successfully make the link between the discrimination she received and the influence of Stonewall over her employer. If you want to see top London lawyers treat a ‘diversity’ scheme like it’s a nasty infection, look up the case on Tribunal Tweets.

If it were only the ABC, if it were only AWEI, this would still be an important issue of institutional perversion of the public media. But AWEI and similar ‘diversity’ schemes are riddled through the public and private sector in Australia. The Australian Tax Office, for instance, is a strong performer on the AWEI index, as are other constitutionally independent bodies like the police services.

One of the more sinister things in capture by gender ideology organisations, is that the principles of the ideology presuppose theoretical and unsubstantiated beliefs about human sex and sexuality. These beliefs are being placed into a type of moral ‘values’ system to shame non-believers in their workplace.

It was the ACON ‘Pride in Sport’ scheme that was at the centre of the recent jersey controversy where some religious players were excluded from the game because they felt the corporate pride branding conflicted with their cultural and religious beliefs. Having Pride in Sports events, needless to say, wins the NRL coveted AWEI points.

Pride in Sport has membership from almost every sporting competition in Australia, including the AFL. Given the ‘trans rights’ claim that males should be included in women’s sport, a highly controversial idea, it is no surprise that hundreds of aligned organisations are showing a preparedness to endanger female bodies, rob girls of bodily privacy, and alienate fans rather than face the shame of sliding down the AWEI ladder into ‘transphobia’.

Andrew Thorburn lost his job recently as Chief Executive of Essendon AFL because the ‘values’ of his church on marriage and abortion were considered to be in direct conflict with the values of Essendon. I don’t understand why a football club needs to hold ‘values’ about marriage and the termination of pregnancy? More precisely, why would the ‘values’ of a football club come under legal protections when the religious beliefs of the individual do not?

Either I missed a lesson on the liberal state or governments and corporations have become subject to a form of institutional corruption that is undermining the principles of our democratic, liberal nation-states.

There is a human cost involved in enforcing ‘values’ on people in their places of work. In the old money, we used to call this ‘tyranny’ and it was why we agreed to keep religion out of government.

A friend of mine has recently been through a harrowing investigation by his employer into his political activity on social media. Even though my friend was cleared of all accusations, he has been left feeling broken, depressed and in a declining state of mental and physical health since the ordeal.

Ben (not his real name) is what trans activists call a ‘gender critical cis gay’. There are a number of reasons trans activists target gender-critical gay men, all of them stupid. You can read about them here if you want some more nonsense information, but ultimately Ben doesn’t believe trans men are men, and he has no interest in dating male-presenting female people. Ben also sides with gender-critical feminists in debates about legal protections for women and girls.

Gays who continue to insist that sex is real and gender is a game remain a problem for gender identity organisations claiming to represent homosexuals. Proponents of gender identity work to shame dissenting gays with claims they are transphobic and selfish for not lending their cultural capital to their ‘trans siblings’ in their fight to erase sex as useful legal category.

Ben was the victim of a criminal doxing by trans activists for his views and all his personal information posted online. The activists also made a complaint to the company Ben works for, a standard move for trans activists. I have been contacted by many people who have been called into their work office after a complaint has been made. Some of these employers laugh at the complaints, some do not.

Ben’s employer took the complaint seriously and began an investigation. During the investigation Ben’s employer contractually bound him to confidentially, limiting his options for support. As a single man who lives alone, being prohibited from reaching out to family and friends for support made Ben extremely isolated, he told me that he had never felt ‘worse or more vulnerable or exposed in his life’.

The scant selection of posts and likes Ben was presented with as accusations, all came within big tech’s strict guidelines. Ben wasn’t using his work name on social media, he was using his own device, and nowhere did he mentioned his employer.

In a state of panic and distress Ben sought help and advocacy. The peak body representing the interests of gay men in NSW is ACON. Last year ACON received 17 million dollars in taxpayer funding to care for the health of LGBTQ+ ‘community’. All of this funding was released by conservative governments.

Critically, it is the organisations that are being paid by taxpayers to offer support to gay men, who are promoting the workplace practices that drove Ben into a deep depression, to the edge of despair, and into a spiral of declining health.

Without other options, Ben contacted the Gay Men’s Network (GMN) in the UK for support. The GMN is one of several gender-critical organisation emerging in the UK, as government-embedded advocacy groups fail the people they are paid to represent.

The GMN provided emotional support and guidance to Ben about setting his emotional state as a priority, being clear and targeted in his response to his employer, and getting legal representation. The GMN encouraged Ben to include information about his sexuality in his response, a detail about himself he had never had the occasion to share with his employer. Ben informed his company that he was a proud gay man and he refused to be shamed or silenced about his sexual orientation.

When Ben found an employment Lawyer he was comfortable with, they told him that he could only claim the protection under employment legislation if he was sacked, and before that, he had no legal rights at all. The lawyers were confident that, should he be sacked, he would have an excellent case for unfair dismissal.

After weeks of uncertainty, convinced he could soon be without a job or further employment prospects, Ben’s anxiety was becoming increasingly debilitating. Without the support of the GMN, Ben said that he didn’t think that he ‘would have made it’. I didn’t need to ask him what he meant.

Finally, Ben was cleared of all the charges by his company but was left in a fragile emotional state. ‘When the anger subsided,’ he told me weeks later, ‘I got depressed, I’m still depressed, I’m a mess.’ Ben has now developed a serious stress-related medical condition.

Gay men are no stranger to bullying. Ben had a horrendous time at school, but had not experienced serious homophobia as an adult until ‘trans activism turned up’. I couldn’t imagine the indignity he felt in having to answer to his political defence of his sexuality to his employer in response to an attack by homophobic individuals. The dignity of the gay man it seems, can be given and taken away by our society on a whim.

Ben is a man of very steady middle-class Australian values, he’s a good looking, intelligent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen, he probably has a share portfolio and a sensible retirement plan. Despite all this, Ben was targeted because he is a homosexual man and his company took the side of activist accusers and put him through a gruelling and traumatic investigation. This was made possible by industry capture.

So yes, Paul Barry is correct, the ABC should examine its association with the AWEI, and we need a royal commission into industry capture in Australia.

Edie Wyatt has a BA Hons from the Institute of Cultural Policy Studies and writes on culture, politics and feminism. She blogs at ediewyatt.com and substack.

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