The wins for sanity just keep coming. Last week, it was the scathing finding by a judge that the so-called ‘gender affirming care’ model lacked evidence and caused grave harm to vulnerable children. Now, another ruling has upheld the right of Australians to not be forced into playing along with the ‘Welcome to Country’ bullshit.
A Melbourne street sweeper sacked by one of Australia’s most left-wing councils after objecting to an Acknowledgement of Country being made at the start of a weekly toolbox meeting has won his unfair dismissal claim.
Shaun Turner was dismissed by Darebin City Council after questioning why the Acknowledgement of Country was being made for the first time at a meeting of the street cleaning team.
He had told the meeting that “if you need to be thanking anyone, it’s the people who have worn the uniform and fought for our country to keep us free”.
“It’s getting out of hand and people are losing it, it is now being done at the opening of a postage stamp,” Mr Turner later told council officers investigating his alleged “serious misconduct”. “I don’t need to be welcomed into my own country.”
In other words, he’s saying exactly what many, many, Australians, including Aboriginal Australians, have been saying: ‘we’re sick of this shit’. Speaking of Aboriginal Australians:
During the meeting with council managers, Mr Turner was accompanied by a support person who was indigenous. He told the investigators he believed the Acknowledgement of Country should only be for sizeable special occasions, including when international visitors were present.
Bro also wins for most savage burn in an HR meeting:
The council’s chief people officer, Yvette Fuller, told Mr Turner that “we have very strong expectations that an Acknowledgement of Country is done before all formal meetings”.
Mr Turner replied: “Why didn’t we do it in this meeting then?”
What he had to deal with in return is a classic case of middle-class, middle-aged, university-educated white women presuming to be ‘offended’ on behalf of the ‘people of colour’ they so infantilise. Except that the only people ‘offended’ were the two middle-class, middle-aged, university-educated white women.
Fair Work Commission deputy president Richard Clancy […] said Ms Fuller and Elizabeth Skinner, the council’s then city works manager, were so offended by Mr Turner’s conduct that they independently called his indigenous support person after the meeting to apologise for his behaviour, but there was no evidence the support person was offended.
Mr Clancy said for all the offence that the two women took in response to Mr Turner’s comments, and Ms Fuller’s statement that the council had “very strong expectations that an Acknowledgement of Country is done before all formal meetings”, neither woman had “considered an Acknowledgement of Country was necessary before the formal investigation meeting, at which Mr Turner had an indigenous support person, got under way”.
It’s almost as if they’re only using it to virtue signal and to exercise control over everyone else.
