I begin this column with a long and heavy sigh. Now, I don’t often find myself in common cause with female Liberal politicians, but on this occasion, I would like to invite them to join me.
Now that we’ve gotten that little act of bipartisan sisterhood out of the way, what am I on about?
When it comes to the Liberal Party’s ongoing “woman problem” — more specifically regarding the party’s men — recent events are an object lesson in what behavioural scientists have long known: rats do, indeed, learn faster. They have, according to studies, a far superior ability to overcome bias and apply what they’ve learned — so-called “information integration”.
It is baffling. The Liberal Party was wiped out at the past federal election due in no small part to women’s rage. As Jacqueline Maley wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald, “In 2021, a groundswell of female anger over the mistreatment of women in politics saw thousands of women converge on Parliament House. A year and a bit later, Australian women took that same anger and conveyed it in a different way. With practical, feminine efficiency, they folded it up and slotted it neatly into the ballot box.”
A post-election review of the loss conducted by the party’s former federal director Brian Loughnane and current shadow finance minister Jane Hume recommended setting a target for greater female representation, but — despite highlighting the need to boost female representation as central to modernising the party — it did not go as far as recommending binding quotas.
So how’s that going? Over the weekend, Senator Anne Ruston was dumped from South Australia’s top Senate spot in favour of Alex Antic. Also in recent months a series of male candidates have been chosen for preselection in Chisholm, Dunkley, Aston and Curtin — all previously held or contested by a Liberal woman. There are now just nine Liberal women in the lower house and 10 in the Senate.
In response to understandable concern about these recent events, Antic told The Australian that “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.
Charming. So, so very helpful. That “disgruntled political class” is women, and without them, the Liberal Party will never form government again.
In the past, I have expressed frustration that all the navel-gazing exercises on the issue of the Liberal Party’s “woman problem” to date (and there have been many) have focused on the optics. Essentially, the need to get more “good Liberal” women — a very telling phrase from a previous think tank review — into seats. As if policy and the words that actually come out of those women’s mouths about issues of grave importance to women (their health, their safety, their economic security) don’t matter.
The reality is, as I have previously written, after 10 years of Coalition leadership, women were poorer, less healthy and less safe. Yet the focus has been on getting into seats women who — likely in the grips of “benevolent sexism” — use their positions of power to uphold the male-dominated party line with policies that have resulted in terrible outcomes for women.
The Liberal Party has insisted optics, not substance, would be enough. Just having more “good liberal” women would be enough. And now the Liberal Party isn’t even on track to get the optics right.
Let’s consider the shenanigans of the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Sussan Ley, ahead of the Dunkley by-election. It was a ham-fisted attempt to play “the woman card” — if we agree such a thing even exists — if ever I saw one.
“If you live in Frankston and you’ve got a problem with Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor,” Ley posted on X. “If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor. Send Labor a message.”
Now I, for one, don’t want to see Australian women assaulted by anyone. But I would remind Ley that throughout the first decade-long National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women, which the Coalition government oversaw, rates of DV remained stable and rates of sexual violence increased.
Two years ago, at the height of the women’s marches, I wrote that the Coalition government was “playing games with women’s safety”. Two years on, Ley is still playing games. Women aren’t stupid. They know that. And to quote Bette Midler in the iconic chick flick Beaches, their “memories are long”.
This is their record and their legacy. And until the Liberal Party grapples with its legacy of policy failure regarding women, women will continue to punish them at the ballot box. Like I said, rats learn faster.
Alex Antic is going to be such an asset to the ALP, Greens and Teals well done LNP.
Nothing like stacking a party with religious fundamentalists who believe that men should always be in charge and that women have a different role. The men problem is being put on steroids.
I am content to have the Liberal Boys’ Club pre-select themselves into gradual obsolescence.
Hear, hear. “without them, the Liberal Party will never form government again” – sounds like a good outcome.
Senator Antic’s false narrative about drag queens, Play School, and “grooming” directly trivialised and undermined victim/survivors of actual grooming. It’s appalling that he is a Senator, let alone lead candidate.
PETER DUTTON AND A RAT – MR. DUTTON IS ON THE RIGHT (IMAGE: PRIVATE MEDIA/AAP/ADOBE)
there – fixed your caption for you
Where? All I can see is the two rats…
Some people get attached to pet rats…
I live with native rats and the catch and release trap is set most nights. Let me know if I can get a contract in Canberra. Might need a bigger trap, and recommendations for a release point.
Can’t we just start ignoring these dinosaurs now? How many times do they need to prove they don’t belong in this century? Write them off.
And while we’re talking about large sections of society which are consistently marginalised, perhaps we should be rather unhappy with Labor too. They may be significantly better on the gender axis, but despite their claims to contrary, seem to be all about leaving people behind in their embrace of neoliberal ideology.
The LNP deserves to be obliterated. The ALP deserves to be hanging on by its fingernails. Yet we’re still talking as if the tiny gap between them is where everything is at.
Maybe it’s the Masonic handshake that keeps women out. There has to be a reason beyond misogyny and mateship.
The LNP’s treatment of Julia Gillard will never be forgotten either. What a foul crew. And always ready to repeat the treatment.
Do politicians wives vote for them?
Re your last line, any woman will tell you that the others (rarely themselves) are their sisters’ own worst enemy.
It is a rare man who was ever privy to women’s conversation and survived intact.
In antiquity, slaves outnumbered owners by several orders of magnitude yet revolts were so rare that they were memorialised.
Since the Enlightenment & Industrial Revolution, class has taken over that function of social division.
Today even that has been, not so much abandoned as, discarded as an inexplicable artefact of history – another Area of Darkness to the Now generation – of no consequence given that neither wiki nor google contains much on the ‘meme’ except paid ads. and/or tendentious mendacity from bad actors, aka the usual suspects.
Thanks for the glimpse through the keyhole. Your second line reminds me of the Turkish harems where the only men allowed in were first deprived of their manhood.
Also, as the need for some sort of revolution grows ever more pressing, how the threatened masses refuse to fight for their own survival. Lenin had a very hard time getting the Russian Revolution up and running, for example. Come the next election I can guarantee that either Labor or the LNP will form government – to my huge disappointment!
p.s. I hope for a revolution in thinking, no bolshevism wanted.
As the Reverend Charles Kingsley wrote in the 19th century, “They are rightly called the Deserving Poor,because they work scab,vote Conservative, and richly deserve all the hardships that are thrust upon them”. He was expressing his frustration at the reluctance of the working class to organise and fight for better conditions.
Given that politics and cesspit can be used in the same sentence, maybe there’s a lack of women in politics because there’s not enough women running for preselection. Can we get the party membership numbers by sex/gender please? It might explain while women prefer to go independent.
Agree, because these are not even grounded or original tactics, but imported those used by the US GOP, think tank esp. CNP Council for National Policy, Evangelical Christians, RW MSM and influencers’ messaging, right down to the ‘intellectual dark web’ that creates confusion or questions about centrist issues including and especially women and the undefined ‘woke’.
Also remember, many ALP voters are middle aged and older (though outnumber a bit by LNP), own property and often have socially conservative views, hence, why the RW MSM and LNP always message on socio-cultural issues, while trying to avoid more substantive or core issues.