John Capener

Before anyone gets too down on DEI, perhaps they should reflect on the good old days – that weren’t.

Those of us with long memories will recall the “Overseas Expert” (OE).

For those who don’t, a typical scenario would go that a business owner confronted with a seemingly intractable problem would shop around the world for someone with the knowledge to resolve the situation.

More often than not they would be Europeans, preferably from Britain or some other English-speaking country.

In due course, the OE would arrive with much fanfare and bring out a solution that was identical to one that had been pointed out by a New Zealand employee for years.

That’s one side of the coin. On a trip though the South Island at Manapouri we did a tour of the power station.

The tour guide, an ex-farmer as I recall, told the story of how Italians were brought in to help dig the tunnels that were required.

His standing joke was that it was a good example of co-operation between the two countries.

The Italians taught the Kiwis how to construct tunnels and the Kiwis, for their part, showed the Italians how to make cups of tea and go on strike.

This brings me to a personal experience with an OE.

Back in the day I worked in a menswear clothing firm. There was a vacancy in the design/pattern department.

An applicant, an Englishman applied; his CV claimed that he had worked on Saville Row in London.

He got the job, no further applicants were considered. It soon became obvious his workmanship left a lot to be desired and his patterns produced poorly fitting garments, hardly the calibre that his CV implied.

The comment soon went around the company “says he worked on Saville Row, it must have only been as a street sweeper”.

My point of all this? DEI may throw up its inconsistencies; however, the past employment situation had its flaws as well.