RACHEL BAXENDALE
The Australian 10:22AM March 5, 2018
Tony Abbott has described Qantas’s human resources management as the “corporate thought police” after the airline issued an information pack for staff, advising them to refrain from using “gender-inappropriate” words such as “guys”, “mankind” or “chairman”.
Qantas’s People and Culture group executive Lesley Grant sent the advice out as part of the airline’s “Spirit of Inclusion” month, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Employees were advised to be mindful of “manterruptions”, when men interrupt women, and stop using terms of endearment such as “honey”, “darling”, or “love”, because they “often offend”.
The HR document also makes a foray into Australian history, advising employees to recognise the “reality” that “Australia was not settled peacefully”.
“Describing the arrival of the Europeans as a ‘settlement’ is a view of Australian history from the perspective of England rather than Australia. Instead of settlement, try ‘colonisation’, ‘occupation’ or ‘invasion’,” employees are advised.
They are also warned against using terms such as “husband” and “wife” and “mum and dad”, “which can reinforce the idea that people are always in heterosexual relationships”.
Mr Abbott said the instructions were “political correctness that’s gone way over the top”.
“Frankly if companies like Qantas want to give their customers a better deal, they can scrap all these inclusion units, just scrap them, save the money because it’s just rubbish this idea that we need a corporate thought police,” he told 2GB.
“I mean really and truly it is a complete, absolute and utter waste of money.
“I’ve been on hundreds of Qantas flights over many, many years now. Qantas staff are very good people. They are decent, sensitive people, they’ve got to deal with just about every possible type of person, and they don’t need this kind of nonsense, they really don’t.
“It’s an insult to them, quite apart from a great waste of money, but I’m afraid these are the very weird and strange times in which we live.”
Mr Abbott said people should “calm down” over the use of terms of endearment such as “darling” or “love”.
“I think people can be incredibly precious about these things. I call a lot of people ‘mate’. Sometimes I might even say that to a girl.
“I just think we should just calm down about a lot of this,” he said.
“I think people have got themselves altogether too agitated and again, it’s a species of political correctness that’s gone way over the top.
“I think that different people have different verbal mannerisms as it were, and I think that we should be pretty easygoing about them”.