Russell Brown: New Zealand’s progressive businesses caught in a Woke witch hunt

Notice: Readers venturing into the wilds of social media – or even reading newspapers – may have recently noticed a number of communications about something called WokeUp NZ and wondered what they’re raving about.
about. Let me help.

WokeUp NZ is a modern demonology for concerned consumers, brought to you by deregistered charity Family First. Its website claims that most people “don’t want companies shoving woke beliefs down their throats” but apparently need help sniffing out these throat-sucking incentives.

So, with the dedication of those who are frankly disturbed, the WokeUp team has spent many months chasing away demons. “It was a lot more work than we thought,” Family First frontman Bob McCoskrie admitted in a YouTube video.

It’s not surprising. Barely a gender pay equity target, a rainbow staff social club or a leadership program has escaped the demon hunters. Even the sins of companies enjoying “unwoke” status are darkly enumerated: No, Briscoes, the time you apologized to a trans woman who was repeatedly addressed as a man by a staff member, has not been forgotten. For the company, the apology was based on the principle that “good customer service is based on positive and respectful interactions with all people”, but it is clearly more important that staff are free to upset someone who tries simply buy a blender.

Perhaps the strangest example of “woke exclusion” cited on the website is “climate alarmism,” which leads to “a condition called climate anxiety.” Briscoes is under fire for issuing a statement on climate risks – or, to put it another way, for complying with its legal obligations under the Financial Sector Amendment (Climate and Other Matters Disclosures) Act 2021, which applies to large listed companies and banks.

Harvey Norman is another law-abiding company, but fortunately, “there appears to be no mention of emissions reduction targets etc.” “. Phew! WokeUp wants us to know that Mercury Energy, an electric company, has many electric vehicles in its fleet.

If you need a non-wake phone, you’re in trouble. Spark is “one of New Zealand’s most woke companies”, One NZ is “very woke” and even 2degrees is “moderately woke”, being guilty of (among other things) “cultural virtue signaling” for doing reference to radio on its corporate history page. spectrum as a “taonga” (this is actually the basis on which the Māori founders of what became 2degrees obtained their spectrum allocation in 1999, so it’s a bit hard to avoid). It’s probably safer to forgo modern telecommunications altogether and just yell at people in the street.

Don’t get McCoskrie started on the banks, who appear to be extremely woke. Even Westpac, which is “much less woke than other big New Zealand banks”, “supports the Paris Agreement”, displays a Rainbow Tick and takes offense to a bilingual social media post about kindness (its depiction of two friends, Māori and Pākehā, sharing a cup of tea and a laugh was “a great example of virtue signaling and symbolism”). Fortunately, there are many cryptocurrency companies that do not have women in their leadership programs and will literally take your money.

It’s a little harder to make a joke out of some of this nonsense. What kind of broken moral compass places commitments to “welcoming people with disabilities and neurodiversity” (Meridian) or “having accessible websites” and “taking care of some of our most vulnerable customers” (BNZ) in the deficit column?

Ironically, WokeUp NZ provides an excellent service to anyone looking to do business with companies that care for their staff and are not constitutionally bigoted. This is unlikely to be a game-changer for targeted companies, which carry out consumer research and know who their customers are. They won’t rush to punch each other in the face just to join McCoskrie’s culture war.

Ultimately, the countless faces of WokeUp’s demon horde are really just individual signals of its failure on every possible front.