�t get enough of it.   It made me mad. Mad that it’s 2026 and we’re actually talking about gaining political power through assertions of cultural superiority. So as those comments continued circulating in the media, I decided to send out mobile billboards in Melbourne and Sydney with:  “We’ve been to more Australian homes than most politicians. Not one looks the same.” We then posted a video supporting our stance to our 84,000 followers.  You might be thinking, are you mad?  Well, yes, we’ve established that. But the real question is, “Was it a good idea when every other brand seemed to be staying silent on the matter?” While it may seem like setting billboards free on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney was entirely personal, it would be remiss of me to deny some truth to that.  Hi. I’m Amanda, co-founder of Eva, an Australian furniture and mattress brand. My husband, Ken, and I are both first-generation immigrants, with a proud Chinese-Malaysian heritage, and parents who speak English with an ‘accent’.  If monoculturalism were allowed to dominate, then Eva simply wouldn’t be here today. Ken and I never would have met. We never would have started our business, created these jobs, or designed the award-winning pieces that over 100,000 people in Australia live with today. Monoculturalism is an ideology that threatens the validity of our entire existence because it’s describing a country where our family, and the millions just like us, don’t belong – a country that, ironically, contains one of the highest proportions of migrants in the world. Migrants who are ‘sick and tired’ of hearing from other migrants declaring who should belong.  With Eva hitting 10 years next year, we’ve had the privilege of being invited to a portion of the 5 million people arriving in the country. People who’ve come to make Australia their home. And to all of us here at Eva, feeling at home means feeling like you belong. So when a politician stands up and tells a significant portion of the people who live in Australian homes that they don’t belong here, that’s an attack on the very value our brand is built around. This wasn’t an issue we decided to go looking for. It just struck the very core of who our customers are and what our brand stands for. So we decided to trust in our understanding of our customer, and the overwhelmingly positive response told us we were right.  But why were we so alone in saying it? I know a lot of founders – people much more intelligent, opinionated and experienced than I am. So I don’t think fear explains it. And whilst Millennials practically invented cancel culture, that wasn’t it either.  I think the real uncomfortable truth here is that there just weren’t enough people of colour in the right rooms where speaking up is even an option. And that’s a real business problem, too. Research consistently shows that companies with diverse leadership teams are associated with stronger financial performance. More diverse leadership produces more diverse organisations. More diverse organisations encourage more openness to talent from different cultural backgrounds. This, in turn, strengthens the labour force, which increases the customer base.  What June 17 revealed is that there’s a gap in Australian business leadership. When the people at the top of the Australian business, media, and political landscape reflect a narrow slice of who Australians are, what we hear can often be from the voices that got into the room instead of the voices that carry the meaningful weight of lived experience. For other leaders reading this, your customer base is almost certainly more diverse than your leadership team. Consumers now have more choices than ever, and they’re increasingly choosing brands that reflect their values over those that don’t. And in a country as beautifully diverse as Australia, isn’t standing up for belonging the very backbone of the values we pride ourselves on – camaraderie and mateship? We need more founders, more executives and more leaders who understand what it means to belong and what it feels like when you don’t. Because when the next ridiculous idea comes along to divide us, I hope there are more voices in the room that can stand up and ask, “Please explain?” before I decide to set more billboards loose in the country. Amanda Niu is the co-founder of the modern Australian furniture company Eva.