The opportunities for travel afforded through Equal Employment Opportunity training.
For those of us whose intellectual life support mechanisms are nourished by an appreciation of irony the Department of Defence, and Russell Offices in particular, can be seventh heaven at times. There are simply moments when you can do nothing but kick back and ride the slide from the sublime to the ridiculous.
A few weeks ago, Barney (Air Marshal Barney Stoush, my boss the VCDF) and I were required to undergo one of the mandated regular seminars in sensitivity training. I can’t remember exactly which type it was ? gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, multicultural appreciation, recognition of sexual harassment, cross-species awareness ? and it really doesn’t matter, they all appear the same after a while and have similar results anyway.
Luckily this one was in a conference room with a window so I could partly pass the time by watching the smokers and the shivering sparrows in the R1 courtyard idle another morning away.
This soon unconsciously transitioned into an efficiently time-zapping daydream about floating the case for compulsory non-smoker sensitivity training.
My reverie in this regard was eventually broken by the now deeply-programmed guilty thought that my automatic appraisal of these bludgers sunning themselves was probably judgemental and therefore insensitive and no doubt illegal.
It just goes to show how all this sensitivity training eventually seeps into your paranoia glands. There didn’t seem much point broaching the ethical dilemma with the contract zealot giving the presentation so when a break was called I diplomatically woke Barney to seek his senior officer opinion.
Before I could raise the matter we were interrupted by Barney’s secretary summoning us back to the office urgently. I wasn’t sure whether Barney had pre-arranged this rescue or it was a genuine one, but on returning to the VCDF suite we were met by one of the many departmental functionaries responsible for public affairs.
The PA guru was clutching a canvas laundry bag which at least cut down on the intensity of the hand wringing.
Apparently some tabloid had printed a years old spoof formal photo gone wrong, staged by some Townsville diggers, in which the said laundry bags were used to imitate Ku Klux Klan hoods. Barney, who being a senior ADF officer has no public affairs authority or responsibilities until something goes wrong, immediately smelled a rat.
It seems they wanted Barney to front an ABC interview program in order to grovel and try and put the spoof photo in context.
Barney ducked this obvious PC ambush by suggesting that a senior Army figure might have more weight, especially in a case of apparent gallows or black humour.
After the spin doctor had left, Barney fell into one of his increasingly frequent philosophical moods ? perhaps his retirement as rumoured in The Canberra Times is not far off.
As one of the few senior air force officers with a real experience of jointery, Barney is a fount of considerable wisdom on the dark and mysterious corners of ADF culture. No doubt prompted by thoughts about the likely impending witchhunts to scapegoat the supposedly insensitive, he fell to musing on one of his pet fixations, the department’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) branch.
As his eyes swept the badge of my hat on its stand, Barney sought my observations about the presence of inequality in the defence force.
I mumbled the usual deeply programmed mumbo jumbo about needing to do more to adapt to modern Australian culture but Barney, as usual, cut my waffle short.
‘Have you ever considered the irony’ he asked, ‘that we spend inordinate amounts of time, money and effort in stamping out perceived inequalities that are just as common in the rest of society but miss absolutely those which are most virulent and most peculiar to our own profession’?
Warming to his topic he went on. ‘After all, as they mentioned again this morning, unlawful discrimination is the making of arbitrary judgements as to someone’s worth, effectiveness and career prospects based on unjustified stereotypical perceptions rather than their individual merit’.
Going to full throttle he explained, ‘the glaringly worst cases we have are the way fighter pilots treat everyone else in the air force as automatically and permanently inferior, followed closely by the blind snobbery of Arms Corps officers in the army. Not to mention the way Principal Warfare Officers just assume everyone else in the navy is there to enhance their career and are incapable of deep professional knowledge or an original idea’.
As Barney’s analysis tapered off I found myself nodding in agreement and not just because I’m the personal staff officer to a three-star. ‘Perhaps’, I tentatively ventured, ‘we could insist the EEO people look into it’.
Barney was silent for a full 20 seconds ? often a characteristic sign of suppressed outrage in senior officers, then muttered something about ‘that crowd not being able to find a large item of their anatomy with both hands’.
A thought then apparently struck him, out of left field, as they say. ‘Draft me a minute to the Secretary recommending a team of EEO advisers be sent to Baghdad to ensure the embassy security detachment are interacting with the local community appropriately during a war. That should solve several problems at once’.
As an afterthought he added, ‘make sure they are issued Kevlar laundry bags in case they appear (hooded) on Al Jazeera’.