When the theory we are using fails to explain what we are observing - especially in very significant or essential ways - it raises the obvious possibility that the theory is wrong. When we find that happening, the rational thing to do is reject that theory and look for one with better explaining power.

While the author's open racism and sexism are repugnant, he does raise some valid points about the gap between the claimed and the actual representativeness of democratic government.

Contrary to popular myth - inculcated by government during its compulsory indoctrination of the population during their formative years - government is not some kind of institution of social service. Nor is its nature in representing the people.

Of course anyone or any group who are against murder and rape are, to that extent, "representative" of the will of the people so far as the people oppose murder or rape. But no-one would mistake any other group, such as a football club, or a quilting bee, or an agricultural show society, as more representative of society than society is of itself, as people commonly mistake government.

All the arguments, or rather assumptions, in favour of representative government are demolished here:
http://economics.org.au/2010/08/unrepresentative-government/

The facts of history clarify things. Australian government succeeds from a line of government established in 1066 - actually earlier. Yet according to contemporary notions of representative government, it didn't qualify as representative government until women's suffrage in the last 100 years. So obviously it is wrong to explain government as a representative institution.

Government, in its very nature, is *always* *necessarily* less representative of the people than the people are of themselves by their own consensual actions.

Stopping aggressive force, fraud, and exploitation are valid for anyone. Unfortunately, governments are too often the worst offenders.

Given that Australia is made up of about 80% of people of European descent, then the 70% of European descendants in parliament is an under representation. Perhaps we need quotas for more European people in parliament?

Anyway, the people in the job should be the best person for the job, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sex. The author is a racist and sexist for categorising and making snide stereotypes based on race and sex.

I've always found it fascinating that when "progressives" are aiming for some kind of genderless and raceless society, the first thing they do is divide people up into sex and race, with numerous derogatory remarks toward one particular race and sex (white males obviously). Anyway, this is a core contradiction in the thinking of "progressivism" today. I wouldn't expect them to understand their approach because analytical thinking is not their forte. Instead, they have a political aim and want to force it through, regardless of the contractions involved.

Excellent Jardine K. Jardine and Aristocrat great reply to demonstrate just how far we have to go. on a side note Jardine you need help there are plenty of mental help professionals in your area please seek them out.

Also Conrad, has it ever occurred to you that the reason why so many people want to come to Australia from all over the world from, for example, Iraq, is because 70% of Australia's politicians are white males with qualifications in humanities, law and economics? They don't want politicians in proportionate world share of Afghans versed in Koranic law, Chinese ethnic chauvinists, Iranians with a master-race mentality and vision of an Islamic republic, traditional Inca or Aztec notions of government, and so on? Other people don't necessarily share your confusion and hypocrisy.

"Diversity" is just the latest in a long line of sales slogans being spouted by the we-want-to-socially-re-engineer-the-world set. And just like their previous campaigns it is full of crap!

The beneficiaries of diversity are often –maybe even usually–those from privileged (non-white)backgrounds.I have worked beside/above/below many such beneficiaries who would delight in telling me stories about having had chauffeurs, maids and tutors to attend to all their needs.

However, when it came to job interviews they took on the persona of a poor discriminated minority, and any organisation employing them over the progeny of a lighter skinned much lower class local was sure to win a huge amount a diversity/multicultural kudos—after all, the lighter skinned applicant just had to be more privileged!

Yes, and some real world experience as opposed to coming straight from uni/the union movement, and straight into a political career.
Practical people with real world experience, wouldn't make the politically motivated decisions; that only ever serve the political contest, rather than the real national interest.
Moreover, if politicians were no longer protected from most of their asinine divisions, we'd likely have a seriously growing economy, no infrastructure deficits; the best health care, the best public transport, education etc/etc.
And indeed, the smallest least costly government, as opposed to the biggest pro rata, bar one.
Some cities with populations as larger or larger than our total, are governed by a single council, or administrations that include a single winner takes all mayor, and his appointed civil servants. If they get it right, they're rewarded with a second term?
Unimpeded they way we have been for around two centuries, by endlessly bickering self serving, road blocks in the path of genuine progress, pollies!
We need more than just diversity, but root and branch reform of the whole rotten political mess, and true democracy, actually reinstated.
When all you've got is a mess of rotten scrambled eggs?
The only sane response is to junk the lot and start again with fresh eggs, or rather fresh ideas that kick off with a change to proportional representation.
And wouldn't that make a pleasant change from the usual "mud" wrestle, that has become our gridlocked parliaments, or sometimes seriously compromised self serving/blinkered pollies?
Incompetents sacrifice much more than money, or social reform, but as evidenced in the, until now, untold stories of our secret heroes, some of our very best people as well!
And and disgraceful debacles able to be covered up for years, by the simple expediency, of official secrecy! N.B.
Rhrosty.

Well this seems to be one of those rare occasions I find myself actually agreeing with J.K.J.
Rhrosty.

Without embracing cultural and gender diversity, Australia will not reach its full potential. I think we deserve better.
Conrad liveris,
I'm afraid you're too young & silly to realise the results of what yo're proposing. Get a real job first, learn about carrying your own weight, live in a society such as the one you're proposing and then and oly then come back with suggestions as to how we should arrange our society.
Ask your Mum & Dad & the taxpayers to stop supporting you for a while then see how you go.
I'm afraid you don't have a clue what people do once you give them an inch.

Rhostry

LOL. One day you might even be consistently in favour of liberty.

'McKinsey and Co. in 2012 reported that the best performing companies have embraced diversity as a core tenet of their operations. How come our parliament cannot?'

I beg to differ. I worked for Newcrest (NCM)for a very long time, during a time they jumped on the 'diversity' bandwagon. HR employed people based on, strangely, not their ability to to do the job but on their 'diversity'. They employed metallurgists muslims from Pakistan, muslims from Bungladesh, Chinese and Vietnamese mining engineers and anyone else who looked or sounded different with the 'castles in the air' belief that these differing characterisics, and these alone, would be somehow beneficial.

Of course, along with that, the entire staff had to undergo rigorous retraining in 'diversity' matters. We had workshops on this and workshops on that; in fact we spent so much time in workshops and meetings I doubt that 25% of our time was actually spent doing anything called 'work'. About the only two subjects that a workshop was not 'rolled out' about was what we were supposed to actually be doing - mining gold and copper, and I don't think they ever actually got around to 'rolling out' a workshop on nuclear free land rights for gay asian whales, but everything in between was well and truly covered.

There was a lot of fairly meaningless activity in these workshops, and we practically learnt whole new languages - parasites are big on this - but productivity fell. What does it mean to start viewing a problem from 'an overarching, multiple level, spatial context' exactly, Mr Liveris?

Funnily enough, it turned out muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh hate each other on the sub continent, and they hate each other here. Chinese and Vietnamese hate each other in Asia, and they hate each other here. The bulk of the work (when we could actually do it) was done increasingly by white people, who were, by some stroke of HR genius, somehow responsible for the 'problems'.

End result: NCM shares fell from $41.00 to $10.82 today. Mr Liveris, leave your ivory tower and get a real job.

'Funnily enough, it turned out muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh hate each other on the sub continent, and they hate each other here. Chinese and Vietnamese hate each other in Asia, and they hate each other here. '

don't point out inconvenient truths Cody.

No one ever acknowledges that almost 100% of the ever increasing refugee problem comes form Islamic nations with hateful ideology. Oh no thats right its all Bush and Howards fault.

'Diversity' was not the only cause of NCM's fall from grace, of course', but it was most certainly a huge contributing factor.

I agree with Rhrosty, we don't need more 'diversity' but a whole new system of politics, with proper representation instead of the illusion of representation, and where politicians and the Judiciary are genuinely answerable to 'We The People'.

The story goes that "Diversity is our strength" was a slogan used for a fund raising campaign by the ADL of Bnai Brith in the U.S in the early 1990's. The slogan was then picked up by one of President Clinton's speech writers who changed it to "Diversity is our greatest strength", if I remember rightly that speech was delivered by Clinton in Portland Oregon in the mid 90's.
The idea of diversity as a strength as opposed to what it really is, a weakness is just a slogan and nothing more, the statement has no basis in fact and it's well known that diversity in a community or organisation negatively affects things like trust, feelings of safety, altruism and, economic activity/investment and community participation.
Look, let's be realistic, politicians, journalists and academics are not respected members of society in this country, nobody looks to them for leadership or for ideas so this whole debate is kind of pointless since there's basically nothing those sectors of civil society can do to improve their image. More brown faces in parliament will lead to more ill feeling toward brown people generally, both from the White ethnic group and also within their own ethnic groups and so called "affirmative action" could be the spark that sets off the powder keg. You only have to look at the negative way in which Jews are perceived in mainstream society due to their over representation in the fields of work I've listed above.

the other dogma that the handbag brigade totally disproved in the last federal parliament was that having more woman in power would mean a more civilised parliament. The exact opposite took place with many of the grubbiest shots coming from the 'ladies '. They then cried the 'victim' card in order to cover incompetence.

"Is ethnic and gender diversity a bad thing?"

No, it's an irrelevant thing.

Does a "diverse" hospital make a healthier patient?
Does a "diverse" orchestra play Mozart better?

"There is a passing up of talent to support mates."

And the ethnic and female members won't have "mates" to favour?

"they are not attracting a membership reflective of broader society."

Your "reflection" is a fantasy.

The non-White population on a *national* scale is negligible.
And men are half the population.

"ticking factional and organisational boxes."

So they should tick minority/identity boxes instead?

"qualifications in humanities, law and economics"

Why not? Their decisions will affect society, the law and the economy.

What should they be qualified in? Zoology? Meteorology? Tennis?

How is having darker skin or a womb a "qualification"?

If you truly want genuine community "reflection" in political decisions, you shouldn't be pushing an agenda that basically keeps the Canberra-silo structure intact.

You should be advocating *direct* democracy.

I'd rather we concentrated on increasing the integrity quotient. You can't help noticing that the majority of politicians and hangers-on up before the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption are fairly recent arrivals from countries where corruption and public office go hand in hand.

Candide,
Your observations are of course right & a clear indication of things in the making because the dumbcrap Australian Left can't see a millimeter past themselves.
Of course it's all Abbott's fault, I mean we can't really blame Labor for its stupidity can we. After all stupidity is not a criminal offence.

Q, is anybody in the loony left wing religious cult seriously suggesting that a 16 or 17 year old has as much life experience & wisdom as a 60 or 70 year old?

Q, has our society, culture & government has been getting progressively worse over the last half century as we have been listening more to women, youth, people from 2nd & 3rd world cultures?

Q, is anyone on the left willing to even try to answer these questions?

Jay of Melbourne,

I agree completely.

Look at the different reactions to disaster in homogeneous Japan with Cyclone Katherina in the US. In the US there were rapes, murders and complete social breakdown. The national guard had to be deployed. Yet in Japan, a much worse disaster with over 100,000 dead there were practically no reports of lawlessness and crime.

What is the difference?

One country has social cohesial through a homogenous population. Trust is high. The other is America.

Of course, for all of human history the real mantra has been 'Unity is strength; Diversity is Death'. Progressives seem to think that history somehow ended with the fall of communism. But in the end it will be only our history as a rich first world country that ends.

Bare with me for a moment please . . .

Put aside for the moment whether to allow too many people from non-western cultures into important jobs might either (a) be fine, (b) drag us back to dark ages . . .

For the sake of hypothetical debate I ask all white people of more influential classes both left & right - What is the reason for why although Anglos now are less than 50% nation and nearly 40-50% are not of western world cultures, YET all those important key jobs are HOGGED by 95% white people of European heritage [mostly Anglo]?

How has those positions avoided both affirmative action and also the wrath of political anger from the 50% non-white ethnic peoples?

I am being sneaky and sarcastic -

Hardly surprising, a generation of politicians in all mainstream parties including the Greens who have been conditioned (subliminally) by old white Australia policy and matching attitudes in an ageing electorate (all these new 'immigrants' are temps without voting rights).

Even Szent Istvan the king of Hungary said around a thosuand years ago 'a country with only one language and one culture must be backward' ...... but by the 19th century it was believed 'nothing really worthwhile existed beyond the country's borders' ...... sounds like very much Australia?

In Australia nativists and others have had to negatively campaign and rely on a culturally specific media to constantly dog whistle on or against diversity to the electorate. This is to encourage an informal 'white Australia' policy and their preferred WASP'ish attitudes (this now includes many of Irish Cahtolic background, whose ancestors were subjected to restrictions and stereotyping in the past).

All Australia's major parties whether LNP, Labor or Greens seem to be doing an excellent job in appearing to be the DLP of the 1950s or 60s..... with large dollops of nationalism and bigotry.....

No need for subliminal conditioning.
We simply grew up in a population with a majority Anglo-Celtic/British ancestry.
It's just the factual reality of our lives.

In case you're not aware, our population *still is* majority Anglo-Celtic/British ancestry, despite the changes in policy 40+ years ago!

People naturally prefer the company of their own ethnic type.
You only have to look at the immigrant communities to see this.

But when it's White Australians who want "community", "pride", "identity", "self-determination", "kinship", somehow what is considered acceptable in exotic minorities becomes a crime, a sin, an horrific outrage.

Australians are beginning to feel nostalgia for our own people and homeland, just like immigrants do.
Ironically, we never left ours.

The pancultural immigrants of the last 40+ years are hardly "temps with no voting rights".

Many of them are just as skeptical of the current overload (even during the GFC!), as it diminishes the living standards, prosperity and security that enticed them here to begin with.