DEI must die, says ‘Crusher Collins’

DEI is being removed from NZ's Public Service Act.

DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – in NZ’s Public Service has been dealt a death blow by Public Service Minister, Judith Collins. Her announcement that DEI requirements are being removed from the Public Service Act relates to all Public Service employees, but specifically removes the obligation from top executives to take DEI into account when hiring or promoting. The criteria for that will now go back to simply seeking the best candidate for a role, based on merit.

Judith Collins has been in politics for a long time, and her moniker of ‘Crusher Collins’ goes back to the time she was Minister of Police, when she implemented a Bill which gave powers to crush the cars of boy racers who’d committed three serious vehicle offences in four years. To date, it seems that a total of three cars have been crushed since the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill was passed in 2009. Judith retains her descriptor, despite having moved on from being Minister of Police, but as an experienced politician continues to ‘crush’ when required.

I expect a collective sigh of relief will be heard throughout the Public Service that DEI has been consigned to the dustbin, apart from those who have chosen to make their living from it. Potentially, many may find themselves now surplus to requirements, unless they have other skills to offer. Normally, I do feel for those who lose their jobs through no fault of their own, as I have been made redundant myself in my working life, and know it’s tough. But I must admit the amount of sympathy I have for DEI promulgators is a grudgingly small sliver. The most generous advice I can give them is to not let the door hit them on their rear-end on the way out.

DEI, for all the pretty packaging around it, is brutal and unforgiving. Those who don’t subscribe to it, even in moderate ways, have stories to tell of the hostility and punishment from both colleagues and managers in the workplace for their non-belief. This extends to places and organisations outside the workplace, too - but who knows, maybe the Public Service isn’t alone in ‘deading’ DEI in NZ for the bad deal it is, or planning to. We can but hope.

And it’s an expensive bad deal! I wrote about the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s hiring of a DEI Advisor back in March 2024, with a salary purported to be around NZD$200K per annum. As Judith has said, and long suspected by many others, there is no evidence that DEI produces any measurable benefits whatsoever to a workplace. Basically, it’s snake oil, sold initially to students by personable and articulate academics, and then taken out into the world and on-sold there like a pyramid scheme, where the ‘profits’ are in the form of needless job creation.

(Okay, so I might have indulged in a bit of literary licence there with my reference to a pyramid scheme, but in my defence ……. well, I have none – I just indulged in a bit of literary licence 😊)

To give other credit where it’s due for getting rid of DEI in the Public Service, it was the government coalition partner NZ First who introduced the Bill to Remove Woke ‘DEI’ Regulations from Public Service in March. Happily, ‘Crusher’ is wasting little time executing it. The Public Service Association (i.e. the Public Service trade union) national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons wasn’t quite so jubilant about it, of course, and said, “Successive governments have sought to build a workforce that reflects the New Zealand population… [Collins] is wiping years of progress.”¹

Fleur Fitzsimons has been an ardent advocate for anything that even hints of DEI and gender ideology for eons, so of course she would come out with that sort of woke baloney. As a Wellington City counsellor in July 2021, she was instrumental in making a public talk against sex self-ID in NZ, arranged by a women’s group, as difficult as possible. Yes, she’s one of ‘those’ women. Sadly, they abound, but perhaps as fewer DEI jobs become available, young women (and men) at university might stop seeing it as a career path. However, even if they do eschew it, universities are so riddled with woke idealogues amongst the staff and lecturers, they won’t easily let go of inserting it into any fields of study they can for some time yet.

Still, headway is being made. Even our normally carefully-spoken Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, agreed that the Public Service was “pretty woke” when the coalition government took office. Damning words from him indeed - and hearing that is almost up there with the same pleasure as listening to the DEI funeral dirge that ‘Crusher’ is playing.

¹ Collins moves to scrap DEI rules in bid to ‘restore meritocracy’

Header image by Tamalee from Pixabay