Code Red Over Code Rainbow

This article was originally published in The Herald Sun and was written by the author in their capacity as a contributor for that publication. It has been republished on the IPA website with permission. The views expressed are those of the author alone.

Ambulance Victoria is in crisis. In 2022, it has already had seven code reds and we are just over halfway through the year. Fixing the lack of ambulances should be their only priority, but it appears that Ambulance Victoria has been too busy putting wokeness before its duty of care.

This dire situation is being exacerbated because of Ambulance Victoria’s adoption of radical gender theory and radical race theory under the guise of “diversity and inclusion”, theories that are coming straight out of our university departments.

This is obscuring and jeopardising the lives of Victorians.

Earlier this year, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission told Ambulance Victoria that it must become more woke. Part of the initiative has been to make a series of videos called “Pride Along”, “Ramadan” and “On Reconciliation, Racism and Pride”.

Ambulance Victoria admits that it didn’t make these videos as recruitment tools but rather to be “created and shared with the workforce and with the broader public via the organisation’s social media channels”. Perhaps the time and money spent on producing these videos could have been better spent improving its operations.

In Volume II of its “Workplace Equality in Ambulance Victoria”, which was published in March, Ambulance Victoria dedicates literally hundreds of pages to the woke agenda. This document is a remarkable insight into its current warped priorities.

It believes that one of the main problems with its own organisation is the presence of toxic masculinity.

There are, it opines, too many white men doing the job of paramedics.

The solution, therefore, is to make sure that fewer white men are recruited.

Managers are being told to replace “masculine language in position descriptions with neutral, inclusive language”; apply a “diversity lens to selection criteria and advertisements”; and “prioritise diversity on interview panels”.

In a life-or-death situation, a patient does not care about the colour or sexual orientation of the paramedic, they just need them to be there fast and be skilled.

Victorians don’t want social justice in action, they want to see ambulances in action. Code reds should not be trumped by code rainbow. Ambulance Victoria needs to think very carefully before pursuing a policy of “diversity”, because ideology has real-world consequences.