Seniors

One of the vote compass questions was “The commonwealth should pass laws requiring more women in senior positions”.

The social liberal in me agrees, but my experience suggests that passing laws on such matters can be quite ineffective or even counter productive. Simply stated, equal opportunities are not created by mandating the outcomes; just the opposite in fact.

In any case which senior positions do we refer to? I am guessing business and the public service? Boards or management?

For the public service it probably doesn’t matter who is in charge; you could put a dog in charge of Ausindustry and no one would notice.

It’s a pretty slippery slope telling a business that there are constraints on who they can employ. But again for the larger businesses with local markets (think Coles, Woolies, the banks,etc) it doesn’t matter; they are cartels and could make profits with a computer in charge.

So it only really matters for exporters competing in global markets. If you start telling them they have to employ women, seniors, ethnic and religious minorities, socio economically deprived, indigenous types, bogans, and handicapped people into their senior management teams, then Australia has really lost the plot.