Four workers have died, and one was severely injured, in mining accidents in Queensland, whilst safety oversight was held back because not enough appropriately-qualified women could be found to sit on an oversight committee.
Sky News reported that “a safety board was disbanded for six months because it didn’t meet gender quotas”.
A journalist on Sky News said:
“this follows the tragic deaths of four mine workers over the last six months at central Queensland mine sites. The most recent was a 27-year-old man just on Sunday died; while just hours later, at a different central Queensland mine site, another worker was seriously injured.
And it has emerged that a mining advisory committee appointed to advise the mining minister, Anthony Lynham, hasn’t met for around six months, because they couldn’t meet gender quotas.
Now, the Queensland Resources Council has told the Courier Mail that they put forward two female nominees, but the CFMEU says that they didn’t have the right qualifications or competencies for the role.”
An article in The Australian, stated:
“Six workers have died in Queensland’s mines and quarries in the past 12 months …Yet at the height of the safety crisis, the state’s Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee, which gives the minister expert advice and plays a “significant role” in protecting workers, could not meet for four months because it did not have the right “gender representation”.”
Now, maybe those accidents would have happened without the committee operating anyway — or, conversely, maybe they could have been stopped — but this situation is surely a telltale sign of the importance — or lack thereof — that the politically correct apparatchiks of the Labor Party place upon workers’ lives. Not that a lot of credence can be given to the so-called conservatives in parliament either, because most of those snivelling cowards go along with a lot of this sort of stuff anyway.
Requiring a “gender balance” in areas which require expertise is ridiculous. How about an “expertise balance” instead? As in, “on balance, we think we’ve hired the best people for the job”.
This situation is typical of the madness of Political Correctness and Cultural Marxism. The PC idiots think that there should be a particular ratio of women for a job, then perhaps a ratio of Aborigines, then maybe one of Muslims, then one of the next favoured minority group — maybe homosexuals or transgenders. What about fat people, or bald people, or people with glasses?
If you’re appointing people to a committee, or to a position, even in part based upon their minority status, then you’re doing it wrong. Hire the best people for the job, the ones with the best qualifications or skills. It’s not rocket science — unless, of course, you’re building a rocket, in which case you can either hire the best rocket scientist available, or you can pick someone primarily because that person is a black disabled lesbian from Outer Mongolia who once watched an episode of Star Trek.
Truly, we are living in Clown World.
Thanks, Leftists, for trying to make sure that workers get killed on the job.
Cultural Marxism — where virtue signalling is much more important than people’s lives.
References and further reading:
‘Gobsmacking’ to put gender before miner lives: Frecklington, Sky News Australia (YouTube channel), 8 July 2019 (see 0.23, 31 min.)
Jocelyn Garcia, Advisory committee was dissolved over gender quota as sixth miner dies, Brisbane Times, 8 July 2019
Sarah Elks and Charlie Peel, Gender equality push ‘risks mine safety’, The Australian, 9 July 2019 [also available at: Miners Online]
Research Summary toward Gender Parity: Women on Boards Initiative, Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women, October 2016
Anthony Lynham, Wikipedia [re. the Labor Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, who is Minister for Natural Resources, Mines and Energy]
Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, Wikipedia
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