Multi-national giant General Motors pocketed billions of dollars from Australians while steadily driving its Holden business into the ground. The American titan – which earns $218 billion each year – squandered Aussie dollars to sustain a flawed business model that it never even attempted to reform. But that’s not the most irksome aspect of this mess. Instead of desperately working out how to put that $2 billion it took from taxpayers to use, Holden became an organisation more focused on activism and cultural reform. Go woke, go broke, they say. And Holden just became the latest case study that economics professors should ram down the throats of the next generation of budding CFOs. Holden has invested considerable time and finances to its core tenants of “driving diversity” by sponsoring events like Mardi Gras and even financing the campaign for gay marriage. It proudly bragged about handing over a $10,000 cheque to Australian Marriage Equality in the heat of the same sex marriage debate and launched Holden Plus – a play on the inclusive LGBT+ symbol. “Holden Plus provides an important link between our LGBT+ employees and Holden’s leadership to identify opportunities, generate ideas and deliver practical initiatives to enhance inclusion for our LGBT+ employees and build stronger links between Holden and the community,” it wrote of the inclusive initiative. Now, this writer supported same sex marriage, as all true classic libertarians should have. The position the company took is not the issue – it is the fact Holden was focusing on influencing social issues rather than figuring out how to sell cars. It launched six key tenants of diversity on its website which include spruiking the economic myth that there is a gender pay gap. There is not, but that didn’t stop Holden from claiming it was woke enough to identify it and then solve it moments later. “We’ve taken a good honest look at ourselves, and in the next five years, we’re focusing squarely on our road toward gender parity,” Holden said. “That means creating a workplace in which women are supported, empowered and encouraged to not only succeed, but to define for themselves.” Then Holden bragged it was “getting rid of the gender pay gap”, which doesn’t actually exist because it would be illegal. “It’s unfair, it’s unethical, and it’s not who we are,” Holden wrote. “That’s why we have explicit policies and processes in place to ensure equity across job roles.” Yes, and because you would be breaking the law if you paid someone more because of their gender. When Holden wrote about “cultural diversity” it said it wanted to be “all out” woke. Whatever that means. “We don’t just want to be tolerant – we’re going all out to be meaningfully inclusive,” it wrote. These are the banal gibberings of a dying company desperate to position itself at the forefront of identity ideology for purely marketing reasons. If you can’t see how contrived this commonplace response is, you deserve to pay more for a dud car than you actually need to. This should be a lesson taught to all marketing and business students, the go woke approach simply does not work. No one cares what a giant car manufacturing company thinks about culture or ideas. People want a good product for as little money as possible. In September Holden only sold 2863 cars across the entire country. It was the worst month since the brand launched in 1948 and a 38 per cent year-on-year decline. But instead of fixing that problem they pocketed our money, tried to be philosophers, and now the last remaining 600 workers in Australia will lose their jobs. “In one sense, Holden is a microcosm of Australia – one of the most diverse nations in the world,” Holden writes on its website. Indeed. If only Holden learnt the true meaning of diversity earlier. In any free and diverse market, if your product is bad, people won’t buy it. Image: Getty