The results of the Victorian election are still trickling in, but by the current count the Nationals have picked up three new seats and are on track for an unprecedented proportion of women in their partyroom.
“We’ve now got potentially 11 people in the partyroom and six [of them are] women,” newly elected Nationals member for Mildura Jade Benham told Crikey.
Benham joins fellow female colleagues in the Legislative Assembly — Kim O’Keefe for Shepparton, Emma Kealy for Lowan and Annabelle Cleeland for Euroa — as well as potential Legislative Council members Gaelle Broad for Northern Victoria and Melina Bath for Eastern Victoria.
The Nationals’ current count in Victoria is 44% women, but if the party pulls through on all candidates, it will have 67% female representation in its ranks. This will easily surpass the most gender-equal Coalition partyroom — the ACT Liberals — which has 44% female representation.
In Victoria, the Liberals are currently clocking 35% women.
So what’s the Victorian Nationals’ secret?
Benham said a big drawcard is “brilliant” women in leadership positions.
“Having a leadership including former member for Euroa and deputy leader Steph Ryan and now Emma Kealy, who are young, high-energy, community-minded women, make the party attractive and approachable for those thinking of joining,” she said.
Kim O’Keefe put it down to the right balance of people: “We need the right women in the right places. You want them to represent your region well. That encourages more women.”
In short: good women attract… more good women. The science is simple, and yet Liberal and National women in almost all federal, state and territory parliaments are few and far between.
Let’s take stock.
Federal
This week it was revealed that the focus of a secret in-house review into the Liberal Party’s performance (or lack thereof) at the May federal election is fixing female representation in the ranks. The consensus was targets, not quotas.
The current numbers are not hard to beat. Fewer than a third of both the Liberal and National partyrooms (when combined with respective Liberal Nationals and Country Liberals) are women. That’s 19 of 68 Liberals and six of 22 Nationals across both houses. Although there is little between them when it comes to women as a proportion of overall headcount, the Nationals perform considerably better in the Senate with 67% females — compared to the Liberals’ 38%. The lower house is dismal for both.
NSW
In NSW, the Liberals and Nationals are in relative lockstep. Where one leads the lower house, the other leads the upper house. But overall, women account for fewer than a third of the party room.
WA
The lower house in WA has a 50:50 male-to-female split for both parties, although a low headcount has helped the cause. In the upper house just 14% of Liberal politicians are women, and the Nationals have 0%.
SA
The Liberals are lone operators in South Australia and they are not holding their own. Although women enjoy a (rare) majority in the upper house, they are a serious minority in the lower house.
TAS
The Tasmanian Liberals tell a similar story, with the upper house one of three female-dominated parliamentary spaces across Australia. But a poor turn-out in the lower house drags down the proportion of women in the partyroom to just over a third.
QLD
The single-house sunshine state needs little explanation: it’s a gentleman’s club. Just 18% of the Liberal National Party are women.
ACT, NT
Both territory parliaments also have one chamber, but unlike Queensland the mix of Liberal men and women borders on balanced.
Not all women politicians are focused on the advancement of women. Good though it is to see some creeping progress in the ranks of the Coalition parties it is yet to be seen whether having female representation in the National or Liberal parties is of net benefit. The sneaky trick the Liberals have pulled to get the extremist Renee Heath elected should be a lesson to NSW voters about Liberal and National preselections. Some women want to deprive other women of vital reproductive health care.
Never mind the quantity, check out the quality (or lack thereof)………………..
………..I can only think of two Liberal women pollies to whom I would give a job more demanding than tea-lady.
Most of them could barely add up their fingers twice in succession and get the same answer.
Yes. Women can be as bad as men. Thats not a reason to forget gender equality. The Vic Nats seem to be a rare island of sense in the political conservative world. A bit like conservatives used to be. Never voted conservative myself but always respected the integrity of the other mob. Bit hard to do that now and I am looking forward to whats looks to be an inevitable extinction of the Libs. The Vic Nats are a worthy adversary of Labor. I wish the well.
What a nothing article. Have you been taking lessons from Guy Rundle? At least your piece of dubious analysis isn’t as long.
So the whingeing bloody Victorian Nationals, a miserable lot and a miserable party and probably miserable constituency to boot, have won 3 seats. 1 by redistribution – Morwell. 2 off the Independents – Mildura and Shepparton. On the basis of what? That they are intelligent women and the constituents of these communities appreciate them, applaud women’s rights (wonder what a straw poll would produce of a women’s right to choose?), fund their services, encourage their education, and their employment??
I think it more than likely that these rural, regional communities are going through a backlash against city people telling them that it is climate change that is causing their recent flooding and devastation – they hate to admit their wrong country people. They’re never wrong! It is like the marriage equality plebiscite reconstructed. The electorates which had the highest and majority “No” vote were in CALD, ethnically based, NESB Sydney electorates, most of which were held by Labor. And the 2019 election result was their revenge. These rural communities are hearing that it is climate change causing floods through higher than average east coast rainfall but their guts, their heart and what little substance they have between their ears won’t let them realise what is obvious to those of us with more than a 4th Form education (year 10 for the new people).
And what are these communities based around. Horticulture and ancillary industries. Exploitation of foreign labour – 400 class visas. Use and abuse of temporary migrants. Harassment of migrant female labour. I remember an article in the SMH I think it was back in 1992 or thereabouts and the SPC cannery at Shepparton was having trouble staying afloat on account of not many people buying as much of their canned fruit on account of the worst recession we have experienced since the 1930s including the COVID one by a factor of 4. IMHO. The factory basically blackmailed their workforce, their captive workforce, into accepting reduction in shift penalties for 1 year until they got over their “Hump” before these higher rates were reinstated. I wish my bank could have given me a repayment holiday so I could get over my hump of not having a job for 18 months. I still made mortgage repayments and got over it but this is life in the country. Blackmailed in perpetuity. And they have the hide to ask for donations. I accept that these areas are floodprone and it is an act of God basically and they are necessary activities but they are not worth giving the time of day any more than anyone else in Victoria. Women I am afraid can be just as nasty, acquisitive, double-dealing and self interested as the men.
What’s the goal, elimination of the Y chromosome?
Unlikely, more’s the pity.
Well worth considering.