Femo-Stalinist clown show targets Fire Dept over stupid bell ringing prank

By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
THE ABC Queensland led its state news bulletin this week with a “special investigation” into – wait for it – “sexism” within the Queensland Fire Department (formerly QFES). No, not corruption within management, not theft of equipment, not assaults, not failure to perform duties, no, sexism.

The allegedly great scandal within QFD was that some trainee fire fighter dude would mischievously ring a bell whenever an attractive female trainee walked by. Apparently some of the females found this embarrassing, which led to Stephen Smith, the chief HR officer at QFES, having a chat to the pranksters.

Here is part of the ABC’s investigative reporter’s story about this supposed scandal of epic proportions: “Department sources have told the ABC that while one person was predominantly involved in the bell ringing, several bystanders laughed at or dismissed the behaviour until a complaint was made.” (Indeed, how dare they laugh at a prank!)

“Those involved in the bell ringing were not formally sanctioned. Instead, they received a talking to from commissioner Stephen Smith, the chief HR officer of QFES at the time. Department sources say that female recruits subjected to the behaviour were not directly informed or counseled about what occurred, and there was no broader messaging within the organisation at the time to call out or condemn the incident.”

Cairns News is astounded that such a silly little incident involving male-female hijinx at the Whyte Island training facility could be beat up into some sort of allegedly serious offence. The absurdities of the feminist war on mascullinity highlighted decades ago by the Two Ronnies was proving prophetic.

We suggest that the sour-faced female QFS officer who complained about the behaviour on ABC-TV this week should pick up a dictionary and read the definition of the word “hijinx”, which we see as an appropriate description of the behaviour. We’ll do it for her from Vocabulary.com:

“Hijinks are examples of mischief or merrymaking that are often disruptive or rowdy. Prank phone calls and gag gifts are both forms of hijinks. Hijinks is a fun-sounding word for activities that are fun: getting into trouble, but not serious trouble. Throwing a football around homeroom could be considered hijinks. Burning down the school would not be considered hijinks; that would be considered a felony. If the pesky neighbor kid rings your door bell and runs, you can say, “Oh, he’s up to his usual hijinks!”

So the “talking to” given to the bell ringers by the HR chief at the time (now the Chief Commissioner) was entirely appropriate. “Hey guys, some of the girls here are a little sensitive about being subjected to your admiring looks. Better back off, OK?” Words to that effect would have been entirely appropriate.

But the ABC’s ridiculous report continued: “An ABC investigation has heard from more than a dozen people about allegations of a “macho hero” culture in QFD, where sexism and bullying complaints are swept under the rug.

“They say a culture of fear and silence has made people anxious to lodge complaints out of concerns that doing so would impact their career progression or lead to reprisals.”

The sour-faced officer, who is apparently considering leaving the department, told the ABC she personally thought there “needs to be a clean-out from the top” of the QFD and that “particular structures need to be put into place” so that the things that happened at Whyte Island “stop happening!”

One wonders exactly what sort of “structures” might be employed to stop male staff admiring female staff or having fun. Camera surveillance of all activities perhaps? Can we envisage some young man being marched before a panel of stern-faced feminists demanding to know why he looked at Recruit X in such a lustful manner? The mind boggles.

The story becomes even more bizarre when we learn that one of the instigators of complaints over “sexism” was Justin Choveaux, general manager of the Rural Fire Brigades Association of Queensland (RFBAQ), who raised the bell-ringing incidents with the office of Minister for Fire and Disaster Recovery Nikki Boyd earlier this year.

Choveaux is reported to be an LNP supporter and back in 2018, he was the target of a dirt-digging campaign by the office of then Minister for Emergency Services Craig Crawford. A media adviser, Neil Doorley, who worked for Crawford that year, was told by Crawford’s chief of staff Peter Clarke, to leak sensitive information against Choveaux, then general manager of the RFBAQ.

As reported by NewsCorp, Doorley was given documents raising questions about large sums of money donated to the RFBAQ. The documents were supplied to the ministerial office, and Mr Doorley said he was told they came from Doug Smith, the former deputy commissioner at Queensland Fire Service, and now a Deputy Commissioner of Queensland Police.

Now it appears Choveaux is having his day in the sun, being championed by the ABC as a whistleblower against the supposed crime of sexism. Stamping her jackboot the Minister’s spokesman predictably assured the ABC they have “zero tolerance” for sexism in the workplace.

“The bell story was explained to me by a senior Fire and Rescue officer who said the bell was rung to identify attractive Fire and Rescue recruits,” Choveaux told the ABC, adding that the complaint demonstrated a “long-standing pattern” by the QFD of giving members a quick “rap over the knuckles” and claiming “the matter has been dealt with”.

So what, we might ask, does the LNP-supporting Choveaux expect the QFD to do when recruits or staff indulge in “sexist behaviour”? Brought before a disciplinary panel to confess their ideological “crime”? Be publicly shamed and ridiculed like a Maoist Red Guard victim? Attend a re-education camp, perhaps?

The clown show continued with the ABC trotting out Labor’s Shannon Fentiman, the Minister for Women. “None of us in government want to see this sort of behaviour. It is appalling, it is disgusting, it is 2024, surely women should feel safe at work,” Ms Fentiman noted. She called for whistleblowers to come forward.

The minister who is supposedly in charge of Fire and Emergency Services, Nikki Boyd, was not quoted in the story. As Cairns News has commented previously, why are there so many young, inexperienced women fresh out of university in high government positions making fools of themselves?

For Fentiman, the ABC reporter and others in this story to paint a silly “sexist” prank involving young men as an almost criminal action is not only rank stupidity, it is ideological tyranny. Women subjected to some present-day equivalent of the old-fashioned and now seldom-heard wolf whistle should take it as a compliment, but one that can be ignored or even responded to with a middle finger gesture or, in the right circumstances, a slap across the face.

The dark side of this this decades-long feminist trend in western society since at least the early 1970s, is that it seeks to impose a type of communistic mind control by a bureaucratic elite. The effect, if not the goal of feminism is to suppress natural male leadership in the public square, the workplace and the home by claiming that male and female are “equal”. They may well be before the law, but they are different.

The the communistic society, of course, insists all are equal and the extension of that idea was seen in Maoist China where women and men wore the same bland work overalls and were sent to labor in the fields and factories or army as “equals”. Some of course were “more equal” than others and ran the all-important party that ruthlessly enforced this “equality”.

It is no accident that the communist regimes of the 20th Century suppressed Christianity and the family structure. Marxism advocated “liberation” of women from the “oppression” of the “capitalist patriarchy” of family and church.

Traditional Christianity as advocated by St Paul urges male spiritual leadership in the home but contrary to popular feminist belief taught in universities, St Paul was not a misogynist and did not advocate that males dominate and oppress females. In the New Testament Paul writes that wives are to submit to husbands as the head of the household, but also that husbands are to “love their wives as Christ loved the church”. That’s a very high bar.

Where St Paul also riles the Marxist-feminist mindset is his instruction that women should not speak in church, which is obviously related to his Hebraic theology around male spiritual headship, or as some suggest, his dealing with unruly groups of talkative women in church gatherings.

On the other hand St Paul also writes in the Epistle to the Galatians that there is “neither male nor female in Christ”, which means one’s gender is not a reason to claim superior or inferior status in the Christian religion, even though roles based on gender have long been accepted.

So Christianity and the teaching of St Paul is the underlying reason for the predominant leadership by males in the historical church, which has spilled over in politics, business and the workplace. However, even in terms of human biology, it is also generally accepted that women are the nurturers of the human family while men are the physically stronger providers.

Of course, within the human species, there are always exceptions to socially accepted roles, even in biblical times. What the Women’s Studies professors don’t tell their students is that one of St Paul’s first gentile converts were women, notably one a well-to-do woman name Lydia whose business was selling expensive purple cloth. Other women who worked with St Paul are highly commended by him in the last chapter of Romans.

The question is, how far will feminist ideology go in order to impose itself on Australian society? It may take a long time for common sense to prevail and for the ideology to be turned around.

Justin Choveaux

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Qld integrity crisis: Adviser says he was told to dish dirt on fireys boss.

A whistleblower says he was directed by a senior ministerial staffer to leak damaging information against a rural fire boss. A whistleblower who worked for four Labor cabinet ministers claims he was directed by a senior ministerial staffer to leak damaging information against the man who runs the Rural Fire Brigades Association Queensland.

Media adviser Neil Doorley said that when he worked for then emergency services minister Craig Crawford in 2018, he was told of a plan to leak sensitive information against Justin Choveaux, the general manager of the association.

Documents were provided to Mr Doorley by Mr Crawford’s then chief of staff, Peter Clarke, allegedly highlighting questions about large sums of money being donated to the association. The documents were supplied to the ministerial office, and Mr Doorley said he was told they came from Doug Smith, the former deputy commissioner at Queensland Fire Service, and now the Deputy Commissioner of Queensland Police.

Mr Doorley said he met with an ABC journalist about the claims, and told the reporter he would be providing more documents about the allegations.

“Soon after, in October 2018, I was moved out of Crawford’s office into Mick de Brenni’s office where Mr Clarke did follow-up to see if the journalist I’d spoken with was doing a story about Mr Choveaux,’’ he said.

“I told him I didn’t know, and it is my understanding the journo didn’t have enough proof to run the yarn.’’

The Sunday Mail does not suggest Mr Choveaux engaged in any wrongdoing.

Mr Doorley said that after living with the guilt for several years, he reached out to Mr Choveaux and told him he was “instructed … to leak potentially damaging information to journalists”.

Mr Choveaux said he was shocked but not surprised at what Mr Doorley had told him.

“It’s disgusting to think they went after me like that … playing the man not the ball,’’ he said.

“I’ve got a family, kids, a mortgage and that’s the sort of stuff that can lead to somebody losing their job.

“I don’t mind them having a crack at the way I do my job, but when they make baseless claims about being dodgy with cash … that’s a whole new level.”

In response, Mr Crawford said: “Well this is news to me. I can say for the record I don’t remember ever having any potentially damaging information in the first place, let alone seeking the leaking of anything.

“My relations with Justin and RFBAQ were, I thought, always good.

“I was a volunteer firefighter myself for 20 years so I understood the tension that often exists around the country between rural and urban, paid and volunteer firefighters.’’

Mr Smith said he completely denied any suggestion he was part of any attempt to undermine Mr Choveaux.

“In about 2016, we did a review – with KPMG – into the sources of funds derived from all volunteer organisations, and as part of that we looked at the rural fire association,’’ he said.

“How the minister used that report is a matter for him.”

Mr Clarke did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr Doorley, in his meeting with Mr Choveaux, said he wanted to “cleanse my conscience”.

“At the core of the issue though, were the concerns in the minister’s office around Mr Choveaux’s suspected political leanings – in other words, his links to the LNP,” he said.

“The resignations of former state archivist Mike Summerell and Integrity Commissioner Dr Nikola Stepanov come amid claims that meddling in so-called independent offices is now accepted practice.”

Dr Stepanov has also raised concerns about government staff “backgrounding” against her.

Tony Fitzgerald, who 30 years ago investigated political and police corruption and organised crime in Queensland and will now head the inquiry into Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission, wrote: “Although most government-generated publicity will unavoidably and necessarily be politically advantageous, there is no legitimate justification for taxpayers’ money to be spent on politically motivated propaganda.

“The only justification for press secretaries and media units is that they lead to a community better informed about government and departmental activities.

“If they fail to do this then their existence is a misuse of public funds, and likely to help misconduct to flourish.”