If there’s one thing we know for sure off the back of the Liberal Party’s crushing defeat at the recent federal election: its failure to represent women was a fatal flaw.
Liberal party leader Sussan Ley has said as much, even committing to becoming a “zealot” when it comes to recruiting and supporting women into the party. Ley says she is “agnostic” about how the party gets there, and while she has raised quotas as an option, she has not specifically endorsed them at a national level. The state divisions should be the ones to decide whether to pursue quotas, she said.
Meanwhile, Ley’s leadership rival Angus Taylor remains vehemently opposed to quotas, saying they “subvert the democratic process”. (Dr Niki Vincent has a few words to say about that.) Instead, mentoring for women is the way to go, Taylor said.
The party’s aversion to quotas was made even more clear this week when Shadow Minister for Women, Melissa McIntosh, called for gender-balanced candidate pools instead of quotas as a way to get more women preselected.
Meanwhile, the old guard of the Liberal Party has stepped in to make matters even more difficult for Ley, with former prime minister John Howard making his view on the matter clear.
“I don’t think I believe in quotas for anything. I just think you have to make judgments about individuals,” Howard told SBS this week, arguing there is no link between gender representation and electoral success.
Tony Abbott, the man who once praised a female candidate for her “sex appeal”, has also made headlines on the quota issue. He told the ABC quotas are “fundamentally illiberal”. That comes from the man who had only one woman in his cabinet as prime minister.
Meanwhile, a petition started on quotas has led to a number of internal issues.
As the party continues to tear itself inside out over the issue, the reality is there are now just six Liberal Party women in the House of Representatives among 28 Liberal MPs. In a democracy like Australia’s, that figure is simply not up to scratch.
Vocal supporters of quotas, including Liberal Party senator Maria Kovacic, say immediate action is needed. But will the party ever agree on the action they need to take? Their previous attempts at targets for female representation have fallen by the wayside.
As for quotas “subverting democracy”, you only need to look at the other side of the aisle to see the outcome of years of commitment to gender representation. About 56 per cent of Labor MPs are now women, a historic milestone for Australian politics. It’s thanks to quotas that it happened.
As Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek made clear on Insiders, the Liberal Party are happy to support quotas when it comes to their agreement with the Nationals. Why should it be different when it comes to women’s representation?
“They’ve got a quota of National Party MPs that have to be on the frontbench,” she said.
“So they’re happy to have quotas for National Party MPs. It’s just quotas for women that they’re not prepared to use.
“Does Angus Taylor really want people to believe that the 28 most talented Liberals in the whole country are the people who’ve made it into the federal parliament?”
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