Jane Prentice is sworn in after the 2016 election

The deselection of Malcolm Turnbull’s Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services Jane Prentice in her Queensland seat of Ryan is — rightly — being seen through the prism of the LNP’s, and the federal Coalition’s, problems with women. But it also has resonance for the broader disaffection currently felt by voters for mainstream politics.

The Coalition has just 13 female MPs in the House of Representatives. That compares to 17 in John Howard’s first term after the 1996 election. In the same period, Labor has gone from four MPs to (after Ged Kearney’s win in Batman) 27. There are just three LNP female MPs, and one female LNP Senator, Amanda Stoker, who replaced George Brandis in March. This is not a party with a healthy level of female representation.

As plenty of commentators have noted, Liberal parties in other states have a history of intervening to overturn preselection results — most famously, the sordid ousting of Michael Towke, who’d won preselection for Cook, in favour of Scott Morrison ahead of the 2007 election. But the LNP has a much more democratic preselection process, which is notable for turning up unexpected results, like the preselection of Wyatt Roy in Longman in 2010.

But this more democratic process has delivered a result that will do little to reconnect politics with the electorate. Julian Simmonds, who defeated Prentice, is a political careerist from central casting. Simmonds’ entire life post-university — he is 33 — has been spent as a political staffer (to Prentice, no less) and then as a local government politician. His wife, Madeline Simmonds, is a former lobbyist with Next Level, a lobbying firm led by former senior Labor and LNP staffers.

Simmonds is the perfect example of Australia’s emerging governing class. His trajectory, from university to staffer to minor public office to preselection for a federal seat, is the model that so many young political professionals on both sides of the political divide now aspire to. That his partner is another member of the governing class, a lobbyist with a standard partisan bob-each-way lobbying firm, completes the picture. Jane Prentice also had a background in local government (with Campbell Newman) before replacing Michael “Khemlani” Johnston in Ryan, but actually had a real-world career before that, in the tourism and events industry, for two decades.

Politicians like Simmonds are part of the reason why the electorate is so disengaged with mainstream politics; they see a professionalised industry that serves its own interests and operates as a career entirely within and around access to power, rather than a genuine extension of the community will into the political process. He could exist just as easily on the Labor side, or even, increasingly, in the Greens. Some go on to become effective political leaders. More simply move on to another, more lucrative gig within the governing class — lobbying, consulting, a statutory board post or a judicial gig if a Prime Minister is feeling guilty about them losing their seat. Not much risk of that for Simmonds; Ryan has a margin of over 9%. He’s set for life at the taxpayer expense.