Andrew Thorburn: A Good Man Hounded Into Early Retirement

Feeding the woke monster is futile. Its appetite is never satiated.

Andrew Thorburn announced last week that he was withdrawing from all business and church responsibilities to spend 2023 with his family “resting and reflecting”.

Thorburn, you may remember, was the NAB chief exec who became CEO of the Essendon AFL team in October … for 24 hours.

It took only that long for The Age newspaper to discover Thorburn was chairman of his local church board and out him as a (drum roll) Christian.

His church - Anglican - was derided as “controversial” because ten years earlier the pastor had preached that abortion was a sin and so too was homosexuality.

These, of course, are not controversial church views. They are orthodox Christianity. Have been for 2000 years.

No less than the Victoria Premier described these views as “appalling” and “hateful”.

For what it’s worth, Thorburn denied that he held the same views as his pastor. Not that it mattered. Guilty by association is now the unspoken law of the land. He was labelled homophobic and anti-women because of words someone else spoke a decade earlier.

The irony, not reported by the media, was that while working for NAB Thorburn was an exemplar of Woke ideology - even helping to convince the AFL to stage LGBTQ Pride games.

Under his leadership, the National Australia Bank won numerous awards from gay activist groups for their (warning: woke cliches coming up) diversity and inclusion.

Didn’t matter.

He went to a church that believed churchy things, so he was out.

Essendon sacked him.

I know. I know. Essendon didn’t sack him. He resigned. Sure. Whatever.

Anyway, now he’s out of everything. He has resigned from several other corporate boards he was part of and he has also resigned his church chairmanship role.

So the sporting world and the corporate world and the church world have lost a good man because of Woke nonsense.

This is what the Woke pitchfork brigade can do to one man who never so much as said boo against any of their pet ideologies. On the contrary, he promoted them. But like I said, only a fool feeds the Woke monster thinking he can calm its appetite.

To try to placate the Woke is to smoke an exploding cigar.

The hounding of Andrew Thorburn out of public life will not satisfy the “thought police”. It will embolden them.

Freedom of thought, association and speech were fundamentals of our society. Not any more. It’s now dangerous to be a believer and a corporate boss.

It’s a dangerous world that the left are manufacturing.

It makes you wonder, once the Left has destroyed the ethical, sensible, moderate, compassionate, responsible world of the last few centuries, what will they replace it with?

What comes after Woke?