By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
The Liberals made Sussan Ley their first female federal leader this week, but the party’s standing among female voters remains grim after successive electoral drubbings.
The May meltdown was a source of particular frustration for Liberal women who’ve spent decades calling for the party to improve female representation in its parliamentary ranks.
Fighter for quotas? Former Liberal Party vice president Teena McQueen (left) with Gina Rinehart and Nigel Farage at Trump’s election watch party.
This week, a petition has been circulating among party members calling for an introduction of gender quotas, started by former staffer Charlotte Mortlock, founder of Liberal women’s organisation Hilma’s Network. Other co-creators include former NSW planning minister Rob Stokes and his finance executive wife Sophie Stokes.
For years, even the suggestion of implementing gender quotas has enraged parts of the party’s right flank. Former PM Scott Morrison suggested he was open to the idea four years ago and, well, it’s been four years.
But the Liberals are a broad church, and among the few hundred signatories to the latest petition, CBD spotted a few surprising names. Among them, former Liberal VP Teena McQueen, last spotted celebrating Donald Trump’s election victory at Mar-a-Lago with her new boss Gina Rinehart, before firing off a WhatsApp message in defence of Alan Jones when the broadcaster was charged with indecent assault offences (which he is fighting). Not who we’d expect to be fighting for gender quotas in the Liberal Party.
Was it actually Teena signing the letter? If so, she never returned CBD’s calls. One “signatory” we did hear back from was former Howard government minister turned Sky News firebreather Gary Hardgrave, who told CBD he rarely signed petitions, and didn’t sign the one on gender quotas. To be fair, his post-election tweet about “left faction saboteurs” killing the Liberal Party and leaving it in a “woke choke” made his position fairly clear.
Also among the signers – former Test bowler Nathan Bracken, who unsuccessfully ran for the Liberals in the 2023 NSW election, probably unaccustomed to the swing going against him.
Brisbane Boomerangs
All eyes in the NRL cinematic universe were looking west on Thursday, when the league’s newest team, the Perth Bears, unveiled Seven West Media news boss Anthony De Ceglie as their new chief executive.
In an Aussie rules-mad one-newspaper town, it can’t hurt to bring a close lieutenant of billionaire media baron Kerry Stokes into the tent.
Brisbane Boomerangs? A name change unlikely to get much traction in the carnivore-coded NRL.Credit: NRL Photos
Meanwhile, in Brisbane, the NRL faced a different form of challenge from the very earnest folk at the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, who fired off an angry missive calling for the Broncos to ditch their live horse mascot (whose name is Buck) and rebrand as the “Brisbane Boomerangs”.
“Unlike real horses, the human inside the inanimate Buck costume can consent to running around a field in front of screaming fans, and no one is sitting on their back,” senior campaigns advisor Mimi Bekhechi said in a media release.
PETA also warned that the imagery of a “bucking bronco” promotes rodeos, which is apparently one of Queensland’s “cruellest and most backward undertakings”.
“If it were dogs being round up, ridden and lassoed, no one would be cheering,” they thundered.
It’s an interesting thought. And not one we’d imagine would get much traction in the carnivore-coded NRL, which hardly seems like much of a safe space for vegans. Indeed, the Broncos swiftly confirmed there were no plans to put Buck out to pasture.
Schubert’s Unfinished
Seasoned executive John Schubert has been slowing down of late, stepping aside from chairmanships at the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and Garvan Institute for Medical Research.
But his work in the property game is unfinished. The former Commonwealth Bank chair and director at BHP and Qantas filed plans for a $2 million renovation job on his Palm Beach pad with the Northern Beaches Council this month.
Schubert picked up the property, with sweeping ocean views, for a cool $14 million late last year, with the latest development application including plans for a refurbished swimming pool and gardening.
Shakespearean tragedy
After losing his job as attorney-general to a ghoulish and unedifying bit of factional skulduggery, Labor veteran Mark Dreyfus was spotted at the Melbourne premiere of Bell Shakespeare’s Henry V on Wednesday, grinning happily as he patiently lined up in the ticket queue. But all the bodies from the bloody, muddy battlefield at the play’s conclusion might have been triggering as Dreyfus exited the post-performance drinks at great speed.
An upbeat Mark Dreyfus, despite losing his job to Labor’s factional skulduggery.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
On Thursday lunchtime, a postscript, when Dreyfus walked out of the Commonwealth Offices Building at Treasury Place. As he departed the executive offices in the company of a group of unidentified women, we hear that his name was being erased from the directory board in a manner as brutal as King Henry’s obliteration of Lord Scrope.
A representative of The Australian newspaper stalked him all down Collins Street but to no avail. Stay classy, Mark.
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