Here are some snapshots of the Liberal Party’s position of and sensitivity to female voters, circa late 2022.
A prolonged internal review of the federal election loss — which saw a seven-point gender gap in the Coalition vote, with just 30% of women voting for it compared with 37% of men, and the loss of six seats to female independent candidates — has determined that nothing really needs to be done about the fact that women make up less than a third, sometimes less than a quarter, of Liberal MPs.
Instead it recommends “targets” for women within the party.
A 26-year-old male Liberal candidate in the Victorian election called for a ban on abortion, along with a variety of other offensive comments.
The NSW Liberal branch in the state electorate of Davidson rejected Natalie Ward, a serving minister, upper house member for five years and former Liberal state executive member, in favour of Matt Cross, a consultant and former staffer. The response of Premier Dominic Perrottet is to quote a taco ad.
Meanwhile, all of the retiring male Liberal MPs are being replaced by men, and Shelley Hancock in South Coast will be replaced by a male.
The failure to lift the number of female MPs in NSW can partly be put down to the dominance in Liberal branches of elderly, out-of-touch members whose idea of a politician is a white male, and the fact that reforms to increase party democracy within the NSW branch have had the perverse effect of ensuring the Liberal Party looks less and less like the community it purports to serve. Internal party democracy is no guarantee of wider democracy.
This is more of a problem for the Liberals than for Labor, which also has an elderly membership, but has a formalised faction system, a substantial role for trade unions, which are increasingly dominated by feminised industries, and quotas for women.
But the hostility to women, or perhaps more accurately the hostility to any effective measures that might increase female representation within Liberal branches, isn’t merely the problem of old reactionaries pining for the days of that nice young Mr Askin, but pervades the Liberals at all levels, as the leaks of the federal election review suggest.
Senior Liberals don’t have the excuses of the party membership. Not only should they understand the democratic imperative of having a parliamentary party that resembles, at least vaguely, the community it serves, they should understand the political imperative to make the party more electorally appealing to women.
So far, all the evidence is that they vaguely understand they should talk about women, but not actually do anything about increasing their representation.
That particularly applies to Perrottet in NSW. If he manages to win in March, it will be in spite of his own best efforts to undermine his prospects. His paralysed mishandling of the Barilaro scandal — which obliterated a superb budget — his poor staffing choices, including the baffling hiring of Paul Broad, and his apparent indifference to efforts to increase female representation, which stands at less than 30% in his own ranks and which will fall significantly after the election, don’t suggest a deft, engaged leader.
The stakes are particularly high because if Perrottet loses, there’ll be one Liberal government left in the country, and that’s in Tasmania.
Given the steadfast refusal of Liberal branches to accept they need real action to make the party more representative, that’s a deserved fate that appears unlikely to change.
Should there be quotas for women in the Liberal Party? In any party? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I applaud the Liberal Party for its commitment to irrelevancy and permanent opposition. That’s the first thing the Liberal Party has done in the ‘national interest’ in over 10 years.
At one level I feel the same way as you. I’ve never voted Liberal or National in my life, but I do think that our democracy is best served by relevant, viable and strong political parties. Just now, the ALP have all the running and are doing the “right” things. They look good because there is no opposition in most of the states and at the federal level. There are some very good independents as well, a large number of whom appear to be just the sort of modern thinking conservatives/liberals that the Liberal Party could well do with.
It was always going to come to this! Being on the wrong side of history means that eventually you will be whacked on the head with the proverbial baseball bat.
The lack of female participants in the LNP can been seen as a problem, however it can probably be better understood as a symptom of a deeper underlying malaise rather than as something which could rescue the party if fixed.
The fundamental problem is the LNP is a right wing party heading further towards the right at a time when the electorate is heading in the other direction. The clearest evidence of this is the Victorian ALP going into the election with a pledge to recreate the SEC (State Electricity Commission) thus throwing the neoliberal rulebook into the garbage can and setting an economic policy course conspicuously back towards a more centrist approach for the first time in the 40 years since neoliberalism took hold of Australian economic orthodoxy (and most other western democracies).
The interesting thing about this is that after the frightful experience of the pandemic, conventional wisdom would have suggested Dan’s ALP would have been kicked to the curb. Instead, the ALP had the luck to be facing an appallingly inept opposition, and the insight to seize the moment essentially turning away from neoliberalism.
This creates a big problem for the LNP which has neoliberalism baked into its DNA. The future is going to involve moving away from neoliberalism back towards an approach which understands and values investing in society. Such an approach is inherently less likely to have a ‘women’ problem.
Simply adding a female quota for LNP positions is not going to solve the underlying problem of its ideology belonging to a time, circumstances and demographics of the past which now lack relevance.
Your main point is well made, but I take issue with your observation that the negative view of Victoria’s pandemic response was ‘conventional wisdom’. It has certainly become a catchcry in the media, a bit like the suppposed disaster that was the pink batts scheme. But personally Andrews and his crew gained points with me for his strength in instituting restrictions for good community reasons, at least at the time. And I think that the Victorian election result suggests that I have many mates.
Adding a female quota adds females – amazing as that might be to some. Females often have a viewpoint very different from males because they have to deal with a different reality – childcare costs, woeful superannuation balances due to raising children, dealing with homelessness now and in later life, cost of living pressures, poorly paid jobs with no prospect of promotion, domestic violence, underfunded or not funded at all child support. I could go on. Their incentive to change the system is visceral and about survival. While men’s incentive to change the system which works in their favour is (mostly) non existent. The idea that simply adding a female quota is not going to bring about change is wrong. Bring on the women. Please.
Well yeah, except that – if women are concerned about all that stuff, why would they be trying to achieve it within the Liberal party? Surely their effort would be better spent somewhere without so much headwind.
The Liberal Party seems unaware – or else not to care – that more than half of Australians are female. ABS figures give the percentage as 50.7%.
If the Liberals imagine they can continue being a force while the median age of males is 37 & females 39 then they are dreaming. Their old base is dying off, today’s young women have higher expectations than the previous three generations experienced.
For any organisation, yes ,numbers are one indicator of representation. However, numbers alone, whether “quotas,” or “targets” are simply not enough.
It starts with values and then making sure day-to-day behaviours align with those values.
Thing is, I question whether the Libs have the strength to go that deep – because as seen by federal and Victorian campaigns, they are about as a deep as a bathtub.
Deep as a puddle?
Yep…that’s even better.
Or…deep as a dried-up puddle? 🙂
Just look at how candidates are selected…………….
…………there are 180 members in the Davidson Liberal Party.
180.
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY.
No wonder they are getting taken over by religious loonies.
I wonder what the average age and gender of the 180 is?
How lucky conservative Australian women are to have two such excellently eloquent, generous, selfless, self-appointed Personsplainers to tell them what they need and want from their politics!
Tell us more about the political needs of future generations of conservative Australian women, Bernard and Sally, oh, please do! As aging, white, progressive biological males, your insights into their political hopes and dreams will be uniquely acute, relevant and representational, in a way that all the female Liberal MPs LNP voters have elected in the last eighty years never could be. I can hear the ghost of Dame Enid giving you both a resounding ‘Huzzah! Right on, sisters!’
Australian feminism is truly blessed to have you both as their Personsplaining Spokespersons. Well done.
Lol not a word on why Sally and Bernard might be mistaken
A lot of women vote for the Liberal Party. A lot of women represent the Liberal Party in elected bodies at all levels. A lot of women are members of the Liberal Party. Not all of them are helpless waifs, Stepford wives, cynical opportunists, bullied victims, ignorant rubes or starry-eyed skates to their menfolk.
Some women vote for the Liberals because they support their policies and their values. Some women vote Liberal because, especially, they can’t stomach what they regard as the nauseating condescension on ‘feminist ishoos’ of mansplaining soft pap progs like BK, and the nauseating condescension on ‘feminist ishoos’ of personsplaining soft pap progs like SG. Some successful women I know in particular despise the perpetual, inescapable ghettoisation that they think gender quotas in politics dooms women to. Some women I know think most of the women who’ve directly benefitted in the ALP from quotas are cynical, mediocre, victimhood-contriving party hacks who make political women look substandard, send terrible messages to young girls, cement the awful masculine tropes of politics anyway by simply ‘out-sh*tmenning the sh*t men’ of politics, and thus are counter-productive to genuine feminist equality and a ‘better gendered’ world for all genders. These are all considered, legitimate and eminently arguable views.
Me? I find it both amusing and risible that politically conservative women are routinely subject here at Crikey to the kind of gutter abuse, physical mockery and deeply sexist bigotry that you fragile little lefties squeal about endlessly when your own side’s chicks cop it. The idea that feminist advances and ideas and respect is exclusive to left politics – that women’s views aren’t to be taken seriously unless they agree with the lefty consensus (invariably still dominated my male lefties, for all the tacked-on tinsel and platitudes of ALP femmo PR) – is as misogynist and sexist as you can get.
The idea that a couple of biological males can appoint themselves guardians of conservative feminism without getting a bit of deserved pushback, meanwhile, is simply funny. Poor little petals gunna collapse in floods of tears, are they?
At the last election, vast numbers of Liberal women voted for the Teals…….
……or doesn’t that suit your argument?
The Liberal Party have abandoned a large proportion of their own base.
The Teals success is probably an electoral hiccough. By the next election their true relevance will have been determined. Most people will eventually return to the two-party dichotomy because the stakes will be too high not to. Oh, plus the inner-urban Greens vote of course.
Chosen on merit always amuses me. Just look at all the meritorious men. If they are there on merit Australia is in trouble. The easy way out is to rename the Liberal(?) party the Mens party or the Young and Old fogies party!
Perhaps there was a typo. on the criteria sheet and it read “meretricious“?
The likes of Amgas Taylor et al show full compliance with that trait.
Utter piffle.
Concisely and eloquently summed up!
Jack is an old fogey.
Considering Bernard and Sally are just saying what plenty of Liberal women have been saying for a few years (that I can recall), that was an awful lot of words to say, “I’ve no idea what I’m talking about but I want to have a go at someone”.
Your usual dazzling argument, ElCee :-).
You soft paps have so internalised your subjective assumptions and platitudes as ‘settled fact’ over the years that you’ve forgotten how to make a case that’s any more substantive than ‘geez, conservatives are sh*t, aren’t they, ha ha ha.’
I’ve never said conservatives are sh*t because I don’t believe they are. I believe that there is more uniting “conservatives” and “progressives” than there is dividing them, and I know this to be true because I live in a community where most people have a conservative world view.
Fair enough, good on you for an open mind, and well said.
Generally though, (Rundle a notable exception), Crikey articles about conservative politics are simply excuses to sneer at it/them. Have a look at yesterday’s issue. Five articles about (yet again) how sh*t yesterday’s vanquished Libs are, two about how sh*t musk/Twitter’s alt right sh*t-o-sphere is, and sh*tty takes in sh*t conservatives Druery, Jordan P, and Rupert.
A single ‘progressive’ positive case made on its own prog merits – to lower the voting age. It’s rare to read Crikey articles on anything that aren’t basically attacks on your political/ideological others. It’s the most Left Reactionary editorial stance in Oz Meeja. Even the ABC and the Guardian run rings on you in terms of positive progressive yarns that don’t feel a need to sneer at non-progs.
By all means regard conservatives as sh*t, Crikerians. But I think we have a jolly good sense of your disregard by now. Spesh for the likes of ScoMo, Abbott, Guy, Rupes, Sky AD, The Oz op Ed page, etc.
What about making YOUR progressive cases/arguments, on your/their own merits? Your lot is pretty much in power everywhere now. l’‘Here’s what I think sh*t’ is not going to cut it forever as a grown-up political worldview…
chrs ElC
Take a look at the results of the last Federal election and think again……………..
Well by and large the “progressives” believe the making of their case(s) is/are a fait accompli. They believe they have the moral high ground and feel no need to justify their beliefs. But then isn’t that what’s wrong with many idealogues, right and left? All appear to assume that god (or at least a god of some sort) is on their side?
The majority of left progressives do not believe in God. There’s some light at the end of the tunnel.
Well I’m not actually a fan of god either – hence the lower case and mention of “a god of some sort”. But in the interests of full disclosure, I do have “progressive” ideals on some things.
When your leader has dinner with a Jew hater and a holocaust denier, where do you go from there? And Trump is the leader because every piece of Republican divisive tosh lands in Australia promptly. Then it is parroted by Rightwing shills.
This inertia seems interesting. I suspect there’s a powerful emotional component, ie that a lot of male decision-makers in the Liberal Party feel personally threatened by women’s power.