Defence Minister Peter Dutton has spoken about his ban on the military acknowledging ‘woke’ days such as International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia (IDAHoBIT).
Appearing on Alan Jones television program Minister Dutton said it was important that the military represented the wishes of the tax payers who funded their activities.
“Part of the problem in this whole ‘woke’ debate more generally at the moment is you’ve got activists on social media who might have a dozen followers who all of a sudden are bullying companies and government departments into positions that does not reflect the majority view.” Minister Dutton told the program.
“People who are working their guts out in the suburbs and in regional towns around the country, they work hard for their money, they pay their taxes and they pay the wages of the Australian Defence Force.” Minister Dutton said.
“They expect the defence force to be trained the best that they can, not to be off on these frolics and I’ve made it very clear that this is not to happen again.”
The Minister said that since his orders had been made public he’d received a lot of support from the Australian people.
“Over the course of the last few days there’s been an enormous amount of support for this stance that we’ve taken, it’s a common-sense approach, and most people want our defence force to be in the best possible shape they can be in.” Minister Dutton said.
Dutton said he had made it clear to the chiefs of the defence force that discrimination would not be tolerated on any basis, but they needed to focus on making sure the nation was secure and protected.
“When your telling people that you can’t use language like ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ or your asking people for pronouns – I’m sorry it doesn’t have a place in the modern defence force.
“We don’t discriminate against people, I don’t care about people’s sexual orientation, their skin colour, their race, their religion, it’s completely irrelevant, we treat everybody the same, and we don’t have the time, the capacity to embark on these sort of quasi-political agendas.” Minister Dutton said.
The minister said the focus for the Australian military was to make sure they were the best trained and prepared fighting machine in the world.
“That’s why our allies respect us and our enemies fear us,” Minister Dutton said.
Jones introduced the segment reading an email he received from an ex-soldier who asked “How are we ever going to fight a war against China when we’re busy running around waging a war on pronouns?”
After the Ministers intervention was revealed in the media last week he has faced criticsim, including accusations her was a “warmonger”.
Graeme Watson
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