WA council librarian Declan Mansfield has some talent as a writer and has been contributing to the Spectator Australia magazine for some years.
Spectator contributors are generally of a conservative or libertarian leaning so when his employer the City of Armadale in Perth, WA, asked him to take part in a DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) training course. Declan politely declined, being well aware of the ideological agenda behind such indoctrination.
After his manager and other staff convinced him there was no ideology behind the DEI training, Declan agreed to take part. His experience prompted an article for The Spectator – without referencing the particular location.
“After doing the training session and realising that it was completely ideological, I wrote an article within The Spectator Australia,” he told Sky News. The DEI training lasted for three hours and was “a perfect example of propaganda”, he said.
The article claims that while the ostensible purpose of the training session was to “demarcate the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the workplace”, it contained exercises that resembled the struggle sessions used by communist regimes for enforce obedience to the state.
Mr Mansfield said he did not tell anyone at work about the article, but some colleagues found out about it on Facebook, which led to a change in the way he was treated by some coworkers and members of the library management.
The former librarian said while most staff at the library were apolitical, there was a small group within the library who were “zealous for introducing this ideology” and “completely indifferent to the harm they could cause people.”
Declan said there were posters all over the library, lanyards with messages, relentless emails and training sessions. “I don’t care what somebody’s sexuality is, what they identify as, what their beliefs are, that’s none of my business.
“But I believe that government institutions, local government in particular, need to be politically and philosophically neutral; diversity, equity and inclusion and its subcategory, you could say, of transgender ideology or gender ideology, is not politically neutral.”
The corporate managers of councils across Australia are, of course, too cravenly compliant to speak up against legislative demands for ideological indoctrination. Many would not even recognise it as such: “Oh, it’s the directives for corporate management that the Local Government Department gives us,” would be the typical justification.
As for the elected councillors, they have no say in such matters, because they too live in a straitjacket of rules laid down by state local government Acts.
Declan’s case for unlawful discrimination is now headed to the WA State Administrative Tribunal, where the council will be accused of running an “ideological vendetta” against a former library employee who spoke out against diversity, equity and inclusion training.
Mansfield says he was discriminated against, basically because of his political beliefs, which contravenes the Equal Opportunity Act 1984.
