Gender representation: the Liberal Party has a 'women problem'

Women make up fewer than a third of Liberal MPs across the states and Commonwealth, when all the evidence indicates voters won't accept that.

When NSW Liberal Treasurer Matt Kean warns that his branch needs to preselect more women before the March election, party members and powerbrokers would be wise to take his advice — in other states as well.

Everywhere the Liberals are stuck in an almost inexplicable rut on gender representation within its parliamentary ranks. It’s nearly 2023 and yet a party that manages just 20-30% female representation is struggling to get the message.

Women make up less than 30% of the NSW Liberals’ parliamentary ranks. A large number of retirements at this election should provide an opportunity for significantly enhanced female representation, but based on preselections so far, that number will fall — especially with a male candidate replacing retiring Shelley Hancock in the seat of South Coast.

The situation is similar in Victoria — women held seven of 31 Liberal seats in the Parliament just ended. Women represent the Liberals in 24 of 88 lower house seats in this weekend’s election — though 16 of 40 upper house spots are being contested by Liberal women (split with the Nationals).

In the Queensland Parliament just six women are in the 34-strong LNP party room. In the South Australian lower house it’s six out of 27 Liberal members. In federal Parliament, women hold seven of 27 Liberal seats and three of 20 LNP seats. In the Senate, women hold 10 out of 24 spots and one of three LNP spots.

Scott Morrison’s spectacular failures on gender and workplace issues have been well-rehearsed, along with the profound cost of having a prime minister who apparently regarded women as irrelevant. The fact that every successful independent at the last election other than veterans Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie was a women is well known (almost every unsuccessful teal independent was female as well). The large gender gap in support for the federal Coalition at the May election is well known.

Yet in the face of all evidence, Liberal branches everywhere continue to prefer male candidates for preselection. This week a senior NSW minister, Brad Hazzard, explicitly contrasted female MPs with “good people”. That’s in a government that, in contrast to the women-hostile Morrison government, has made female economic participation the central goal of its economic agenda. Did Hazzard even read his own government’s budget this year?

Like the Victorian Liberals, the NSW Liberals face an assault in their heartland seats from teal-style independents, although the Perrottet government bears little of the deep anger and hostility that Morrison generated. All of the Victorian independents backed by Climate 200 are women; Joeline Hackman has already been selected as a teal independent in Manly in Sydney.

That the deputy leader of the NSW party has to urge members to wake up to the rapidly growing political non-viability of relying on male candidates suggest a wilful refusal to face electoral facts, as though the flogging handed out by voters to the federal Liberal brand in May was an election result in some other country driven by factors unrelated to those that animated the same voters who will be going to the ballot box in March. And it’s a story being replicated in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

The good thing about losses is they’re supposed to be a valuable teacher. Not when party branches simply ignore the lessons.