EDITORIAL: Could Donald Trump’s war on woke spill over to Australia?

President Donald Trump’s war on wokeness has ignited a moment of reckoning for diversity efforts which, unless advocates urgently correct course, could spell doom for the movement in Australia too.

With a flick of his Sharpie, Mr Trump this week ordered all government officials responsible for overseeing diversity, equality and inclusion efforts at federal agencies be placed on immediate administrative leave and all programs cease.

It’s a move that won him plenty of fans in the US and abroad among those who feel they’ve been pushed to the margins by a growing global obsession with diversity over all else.

It’s a question of balance, and Mr Trump is leading the revolt against the established perception that diversity measures have strayed way off course. Rectifying the alienation of some minorities has gone so far that it has left many others feeling alienated themselves.

Australians are overwhelmingly sensible and believe in equality of opportunity. Australians embrace diversity and are, despite what some would have us believe, inclusive. But there are limits. And few would argue that extremists have stretched the agenda well beyond sensible limits.

The Diversity Council of Australia reports that opposition to diversity and inclusion initiatives doubled from 2019 to 2023. Fewer than 10 per cent of Australian workers, the research claims, oppose them.

Younger men are leading the backlash.

They feel they’re being punished and sidelined by an overwhelming cultural preoccupation with diversity.

The result of the Voice referendum would suggest there is an uneasiness in middle Australia about the pursuit of political social agendas encroaching too far into areas suburban families feel uncomfortable about.

It’s a dynamic shift from the same-sex marriage debate in which Australians overwhelmingly embraced diversity and individual freedoms. Nothing has changed other than a growing number of Australians feel pressure to think and act in ways they don’t feel comfortable with. They feel hounded and harassed at the margins.

Diversity initiatives are supposed to be about inclusion.

But those who are rejecting them perceive them instead as exclusionary, and that perception threatens to undermine the hard-fought gains made in recent decades.

Inequality is still a thing.

While inequality is real, so too is the disenfranchisement felt by those who oppose those well-intentioned diversity initiatives.

Ignoring or ridiculing the concerns of Australians uneasy about the force of the DEI movement and hoping they simply go away away is a dangerous game.

That will allow that simmering resentment to boil over.

Mr Trump’s election should prompt soul-searching among advocates of diversity initiatives who have in many cases gone too far and not carried the middle with them.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by WAN Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore