Two women candidates lost to former MP Tim Wilson in the Liberal party’s preselection vote for the electorate of Goldstein over the weekend.
Stephanie Hunt, a lawyer and former Liberal staffer to former Foreign Ministers Julie Bishop and Marise Payne, was in the running for the preselection vote. She ran against Wilson and Colleen Harkin, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs who had previously run as a candidate for the Liberal party in the neighbouring Victorian electorate of Macnamara.
Tim Wilson formerly held the Victorian electorate of Goldstein as a Liberal MP from 2016, before losing the seat in the 2022 federal election to independent MP Zoe Daniel. At the time, his primary vote dropped by more than 12 per cent.
Despite the significant loss for the Liberal party at the federal election two years ago, a majority of around 300 party members on Saturday voted for Wilson as their preferred candidate heading into the next federal election, expected to be held in 2025.
Congratulations @TimWilsonMP on becoming our Party’s candidate for Goldstein. Tim understands the challenges people are facing with mortgage costs and power bills soaring under Labor and will work every day to deliver real cost-of-living relief for families and small businesses.
— Peter Dutton (@PeterDutton_MP) March 24, 2024
The Victorian Liberals issued a statement on the weekend, endorsing his “deeply principled commitment” to Goldstein.
“Tim has been driven to run for Goldstein at the next federal election by his deeply principled commitment to integrity in public service and his belief that the Goldstein community is worth fighting for,” the statement read.
“He is committed to strengthening the pathway to home ownership for young residents in Goldstein to make owning their own home a reality, to ensure they have the opportunity to build strong families and strong communities.”
Over the weekend, the Liberal party also held a preselection vote for the Victorian electorate of Kooyong. It was previously held by former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who was defeated in the 2022 federal election by independent MP Dr Monique Ryan.
Three women were up against just one man in the preselection vote. Amelia Hamer, previously a Director of Strategy at AirWallex and advisor to Senator Jane Hume, won the preselection convincingly. Rochelle Pattison, a transgender woman and the director of an asset management and corporate finance firm, was overwhelmingly defeated by Hamer, who won 233 votes against Pattison’s 59 votes.
Before the vote, Pattison, the Chair of Transgender Victoria and member of the International Women’s Forum, was backed by several key Liberal members, including chair of Liberal Women’s Council Marg Hawker.
Hamer is the great-niece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert “Dick” Hamer.
Kooyong, once considered a blue ribbon Liberal seat, is now held by Ryan with a margin of 3 per cent. Hamer will now face the difficult task of winning back the seat.
Congratulations to Amelia Hamer who has been selected as the Liberal Party’s candidate for Kooyong for the next Federal Election. pic.twitter.com/MN34T2OUp8
— Liberal Victoria (@LiberalVictoria) March 23, 2024
The woman problem in action
Involvement of women and minority groups in the Liberal party is limited. Just 28 per cent of Liberal parliamentarians in the House of Representatives and the Senate are women. It’s a far cry from the 50 per cent target that an internal review recommended the party achieve within the next decade.
Prior to the 2022 federal election, analysis by the ANU Global Institute for Women’s Leadership found just 20 per cent of female candidates in the Coalition were contesting winnable seats.
Last week, the party announced it would establish the Dame Margaret Guilfoyle Women’s Network to “provide opportunities and avenues for continued involvement for professional women associated with the party”.
The network shows promise of change in the Liberal party, but there’s one thing halting progress: many in the party deny the fact that gender and identity stop women and other underrepresented groups from accessing power.
Last week, Senator Alex Antic told The Australian: “The ‘gender card’ is nothing but a grievance narrative constructed by the activist media and a disgruntled political class.
“We need the best person for the job regardless of race, gender or sexuality,” he said.
For the preselection vote in Kooyong over the weekend, former prime minister Tony Abbott backed candidate Susan Morris and said the Liberal party needs “more capable candidates who happen to be women” to be “broadly representative of the wider community”.
Speaking about gender quotas on Sky News last month, Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes said: “I would be personally horrified and embarrassed to think I was ever selected for anything because of my gender.”
We only need to look to the results of the preselection votes over the weekend to see these attitudes play out.
In the 2022 election, the Liberal party lost the electorate of Goldstein, a seat they have held since the division’s establishment in 1984. Despite two qualified, capable women candidates, party memebers have chosen to put the same man up as the candidate for the next federal election.
While the party voted for Amelia Hamer to run as their candidate for the seat of Kooyong in the next election, winning the seat from an incumbent Independent MP is, as history shows, a tough ask.