Former Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop was the only woman in Tony Abbott’s 2013 federal cabinet, and she says she may have only been included because of her position as the elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party.
“I wasn’t appointed by Tony, I was there in my own right as the elected deputy leader, so they had no choice but to have me in cabinet,” Bishop said, speaking on Future Women’s Too Much podcast.
“I suspect that had I not been deputy leader, I would not have been in cabinet, so there would have been no women in the cabinet. We’ll never know.”
Bishop, who has just been appointed as the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Myanmar, recalled having a “ferocious discussion” with the government’s leadership team about the lack of women in Abbott’s cabinet. She said she couldn’t speak about it publicly because she was bound by “cabinet solidarity”.
“I couldn’t express my concern, my distress, publicly about the composition of the cabinet because then of course, it would turn to ‘who would you kick out? Who would you put in?’,” Bishop explained.
“I certainly had an intense discussion with the leadership team about not just the optics of – ‘it’s 2013 and there’s only 1 woman out of 20 in cabinet’, but the other women who were perfectly capable of holding a cabinet position if not more capable than many of those men chosen.”
She wished the media had made more of a fuss about it at the time, she said.
Bishop’s comments come just days after Abbott called for the Liberal Party to bring more women into its ranks.
Looking back, Bishop said that she wished the Liberal Party had had at least “targets” for women’s representation during her time in politics.
“I wish the Liberal party had introduced at least targets that they were held accountable for,” Bishop said. “I mean, you can have a target, but if you’re not held accountable for it, it means nothing. So I guess if you’re held accountable, it’s like a quota.”
Asked about her departure from politics, after missing out on becoming prime minister, Bishop says she was determined to portray a sense of “optimism”.
“I didn’t want women to think that this is the story of what always happens to women in politics,” she explained.
“If you can fight your way in, you fight your way up the ladder and then you never get the top prize. And that’s the story that was circulating out there. I wanted to leave the message that it’s okay, no I didn’t win the leadership battle but there are plenty of other things for me to do.
“You draw a line and you move on.”