Former federal Wentworth MP Dave Sharma will make a return to parliament after a surprise preselection win where he secured the Senate seat recently vacated by Marise Payne.
In a vote of Liberal Party members on Sunday, Sharma defeated Andrew Constance, another former Liberal MP, with 251 votes to 206 votes in the preselection battle for the spot.
Sharma, who also served as Australia’s Ambassador to Israel between 2013 and 2017, lost his seat in federal parliament at the 2022 election, when independent Allegra Spender won Wentworth with 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
Sharma replaces Marise Payne, who retired from politics on September 30, after serving as one of the most senior women in the previous Morrison government, including as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Women. She was the longest serving woman in the history of the Senate.
There were 10 candidates in the preselection race for Payne’s seat, with two men considered frontrunners – moderate Andrew Constance and former ACT Liberal senator Zed Seselja, from the party’s right. Dominic Perrottet’s former staffer Monica Tudehope, who had the backing of the Business Council of Australia CEO Bran Black and Perrottet, was also in the race. As was the Lowy Institute’s Jess Collins.
Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton endorsed both Seselja, from his own right faction, as well as Constance.
A lost opportunity to boost number of women
The contest for Payne’s Senate seat was an opportunity for the Liberal Party to show they are interested in rebuilding the place of women in the party, following their resounding election defeat in 2022.
There are now just 10 women from the Liberal Party in the Senate, following the departure of Payne. With Sharma’s win, there will now be 13 Liberal Party men in the Senate. Across the entire federal parliament, the party’s representation of women is much lower, reaching just over 35 per cent.
There are just 7 women from the Liberal Party in the House of Representatives.
There was also an opportunity to build on the recent addition of Maria Kovacic, who filled a Senate spot in May this year that was previously held by the late Jim Molan. Kovacic, a self-described “progressive Liberal” with a small business background, has brought some much needed youth and diversity to the party’s ranks.
But it was three men – Sharma, Constance, and Seselja – who secured the most support from Liberal Party members. The women in the race – although equipped with impressive CVs and endorsements – were never in with a real chance.
It comes as Hilma’s Network, an organisation founded by former journalist Charlotte Mortlock, has worked intensively this year to connect like-minded women in a bid to boost the base of Liberal Party members with more women, especially younger women.
Hilma’s Network launched a gender representation tracker that lists women making up just 29 per cent of Coalition representatives in federal parliament. Mortlock told Women’s Agenda in April that she was determined to “flood the base of this Party with younger people and more women” and the organisation is quickly gathering momentum.
However last year, a review into the Liberal Party’s election loss ruled out formal quotas for the number of women in federal parliament. The party has a long history of opposing quotas for women in winnable seats, a strategy that was embraced by the Labor Party in the 1990s.
Without quotas, the Liberal Party needs to make a concerted attempt to ensure women are given every opportunity to be in with a chance to secure seats in parliament. Dutton, who backed Constance and Seselja, made no effort to do so when the opportunity arose this time around.
The Liberal Party needs to attract women voters, who largely deserted the party in 2022, if it ever hopes to form government. Supporting women when preselection races come around is key to that.