Despite the wishes of certain media commentators, and despite what certain segments of the mainstream media said would happen, a Dan Andrews-led Labor party achieved a thumping election win over the weekend in Victoria, obliterating a Matthew Guy-led Liberal Party.
Now as the questions continue on just how it all went so wrong, some of the Victorian Liberal Party’s best-known elders are urging for the party to change, if they want a hope of doing better in four years’ time.
While over in NSW, there are early indications that the state Liberal Party there may fail to take stock of some of the lessons of their Victorian counterparts.
Federally, the Liberal party received its own thumping at the Federal election – seeing once blue-ribbon seats and some of its once powerful moderate men losing to women who ran independently on platforms of integrity, climate action and gender equality.
And internationally, there are also some very good examples of the strong and powerful voting block of young women that – despite older and more established men thinking it should be otherwise – are helping to dramatically influence the outcome of elections by swinging well against conservative parties. In November’s US Midterms, 72 per cent of women aged 18 to 29 voted Democrat.
Where to start on all these converging factors? Let’s go with former Liberal premier, Ted Baillieu, who told Nine News about the need for generational renewal in the Victorian Libs. “We need young people, we need change,” he said. “We’ve had people representing us on television last night who are all of the past. I’m of the past. Get rid of us!”
But don’t expect the current power base of the Liberals to do much on that, too soon. Especially in Victoria, despite their biggest state election loss since the 1950s. Currently, there doesn’t appear to be any women in contention for the leadership of the party – with Guy announcing he is stepping down. That’s possibly due to the lack of women within the party actually elected. Meanwhile, they have significant cultural issues to address, given the party endorsed a number of candidates who openly held racist, anti-abortion, and anti-climate action views.
The Liberal brand, both across the states and federally, needs women. It needs youth, and it needs diversity. It needs to quit with the lure of “free speech”, anti-political correctness, and culture warrior worshipping at the alter of the likes of Jordan Peterson, to instead focus on the issues that Australians care about. It needs its male leaders to stop patronising women with comments about having daughters or a wife who talks to them about “these issues”. It needs to consider why it’s losing votes to independents, and modernise its policies to meet the needs of the world as it is today, rather than a world some of its leaders want to retain from the past. It needs to stop blaming women for its election losses, and start blaming itself.
The Liberal brand needs to do proper due diligence on the candidates it endorses, rather than being surprised when the past comments and actions of their ultra-conservative and often extreme right-wing Christian party picks emerge, and then dominate the public debate.
But so far, it’s not doing enough to answer the call.
The NSW Liberal Party is arguably doing more than any other of the Liberal brands around the country to evolve with the times, with policies supporting climate action, as well as early childhood education, women’s health and other areas.
But then it fails itself and disrupts its own good work by failing to do enough on representation. Just this week, the Liberal Party failed to preselect Natalie Ward, who is currently the party’s most senior woman in the NSW Parliament. She had been attempting to make the move from the upper house to the lower house, but lost out on the vote to Matt Cross, a former Mike Baird staffer. Ward had recently spoken out about the need for quotas in the Liberal party, and was seen as a promising, future leader. Currently, there are just 10 women in the Liberal Party sitting in the NSW Parliament, across both houses. Ward was one of just three Liberal women in the NSW upper house.
Talented and experienced women like Ward have long been getting shafted during preselections, both federally and across the states. And preselection is no guarantee of fixing the missing women problem. Despite preselecting a large number of women at the May Federal election, a massive 80 per cent of the women running for the Coalition were in seats they were unlikely to win, or would be difficult to hold.
Liberal member and founder of the Hilma Network Charlotte Mortlock is advocating for more women to get involved in the Liberal party, and also hitting back against the likes of Nick Cater, who wrote that “single young females are the biggest threat to parties on the right”. Mortlock wrote in response to Cater that far from being a threat, “young, single women” are actually the solution.
“We aren’t going to win women over by patronizing them, and it’s frankly embarrassing that people might think young views reflect others in the party,” Mortlock said.
Mortlock provides a strong and compelling woman’s voice on the Liberal brand. A voice that sits outside of the party machine, and is therefore not silenced by the powerful men within it. She’s getting great attention across national newspapers and television, and mobilising a network of women behind her. The Liberal party can’t pretend they’re not hearing her, but will they listen?
Meanwhile, shadow finance minister Jane Hume is working on a review of the Liberal party’s massive loss at the 2022 federal election, alongside former federal Liberal director Brian Loughnane.
What, if anything, will change as a result of Hume’s report? We’ll wait to see what can and will be shared publicly from the report. But quotas seem like the obvious answer, as they should have been over the past decade.
Pictured above: Former Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy, following his election defeat.