LGBTIQA+ ownership in Australian procurement rests on the voluntary commitments first withdrawn in the United States

The retreat of corporate programs in the United States

For around a decade, American supplier diversity was the model that Australian procurement teams studied. Large companies published spending goals, certified suppliers were listed in national directories, and Australian organisations adopted the language of diverse suppliers. Between late 2024 and early 2025, however, a number of the best known American programs were cut back within a few months of each other.

In November 2024, Walmart said it would no longer consider race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when it offers supplier contracts. On 6 January 2025, McDonald’s announced that it would end a program encouraging its suppliers to develop diversity training and to bring members of minority groups into their leadership. Target ended the diversity goals that included recruiting more diverse suppliers and closed a program promoting Black owned businesses, and Meta ended its diversity program, including its policies for choosing vendors. Harley Davidson had already dropped its supplier diversity spending goals, and Brown Forman had dropped its supplier diversity ambitions.

The federal government followed in January 2025, when Executive Order 14173 revoked Executive Order 11246, which President Johnson signed in 1965, and required every federal contract to include a term under which the contractor certifies that it does not operate diversity programs that violate federal anti discrimination law and agrees that this compliance is material to the government’s payment decisions. Around the end of March, United States embassies wrote to contractors in European countries including France, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Spain asking them to provide the same certification.

Why the voluntary programs were withdrawn first

The companies concerned gave different reasons for their decisions. The Associated Press linked the retreat to a campaign by conservative activists conducted through the courts and social media, to the Supreme Court’s July 2023 ruling against affirmative action in university admissions, and to the new administration’s executive orders, while Brown Forman said that the legal and external environment had shifted dramatically. Political pressure, legal risk and reputational concerns all played a part. Most of these programs had been set by the companies themselves and, with no statute requiring them, could be withdrawn by announcement, whereas the obligations attached to federal contracting required an executive order to undo.

The direction of Australian government policy

Australian government policy has so far moved in the opposite direction. In March 2025, Parliament passed amendments requiring employers with 500 or more staff to select three gender equality targets and, by the end of a three year cycle, either meet them or demonstrate improvement. Private sector employers selected their targets in their 2025 to 2026 reporting, between 1 April and 31 May 2026. Employers that fail to select, progress or meet their targets may be unable to tender for certain Commonwealth contracts, which is a substantial consequence given that in 2023 to 2024 Commonwealth entities reported 83,453 contracts on AusTender with a combined maximum value of $99.6 billion, although those values cover the life of each contract and are not an annual figure. The targets concern employment and workplace equality and do not apply to suppliers, so they are not a like for like comparison with supplier diversity, but they show a government prepared to attach consequences to its purchasing. Over the same period, the Indigenous Procurement Policy target is rising each year towards 4 per cent in 2029 to 2030.

Australian legal advice reached a similar assessment early, and in March 2025 King & Wood Mallesons advised Australian boards that diversity initiatives were unlikely to unwind here to the same degree as in the United States, citing the positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act and reporting obligations to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, and identified the open issue as the extent to which Australian businesses with related United States entities would be affected. Corporate behaviour in Australia has not tracked government policy as closely, and in late 2025 Pride in Diversity’s National Conversation report, which drew on 92 senior leaders, board directors and executives, found that about one in ten said their organisations were stepping back from diversity policies or ending programs entirely, over the same period in which government obligations were expanding.

The position of LGBTIQA+ ownership in Australian procurement

The supplier categories that appear most durable in Australia are each attached to a formal obligation. Indigenous businesses are covered by the Indigenous Procurement Policy, social enterprises and Aboriginal businesses are covered by state frameworks such as Victoria’s, and gender equality in large employers is now covered by the Workplace Gender Equality Act and its link to Commonwealth contracts.

LGBTIQA+ ownership is not mentioned in any of the Commonwealth or Victorian procurement policies we have reviewed. Where a company includes it in its purchasing, it does so voluntarily, which is the same kind of commitment that was withdrawn first in the United States.

The evidence to date does not suggest that Australia is about to follow the American path, and governments can change formal obligations too. An obligation written into law or policy is nonetheless harder to abandon quietly than a commitment a company has made to itself, and because LGBTIQA+ ownership in Australian purchasing currently depends entirely on voluntary commitments, its place in any buyer’s purchasing lasts only as long as that company chooses to keep it.

Sources

1. Associated Press via Insurance Journal, Which companies are pulling back on diversity initiatives?, 14 February 2025
2. Taft, Executive Order 14173: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit Based Opportunity, 21 January 2025
3. Sullivan & Cromwell, US embassies demand contractors operating in certain European countries certify compliance with US anti discrimination law, April 2025
4. Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Statement on the Setting Gender Equality Targets Act, 27 March 2025
5. Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Targets: frequently asked questions
6. Department of Finance, Statistics on Australian Government procurement contracts
7. King & Wood Mallesons, Is DEI really dead?, 31 March 2025
8. AMES News, Diversity in the workplace programs under fire, 23 December 2025
9. National Indigenous Australians Agency, The Indigenous Procurement Policy is changing
10. Buying for Victoria, Social and sustainable procurement objectives and outcomes

Source pages last checked 19 October 2026.