Speakman says quotas no longer necessary for the NSW Libs

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman says the Liberal Party does not need quotas, insisting the state party had worked to end the “boys’ club”, resulting in an almost equal gender balance of MPs.

Speakman said his Liberal party room was made up of 45 per cent women, and while that was not quite parity, the state party had managed to ensure talented women were elected to parliament.

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman says his parliamentary party is more diverse than Labor’s.Credit: Steven Siewert

“I don’t think we need quotas at the moment in the Liberal Party,” Speakman said in an interview with this masthead ahead of his budget reply speech on Thursday.

“But where things were a few years ago, I would have said, well, it’s not a particularly Liberal principle or merit-based, but things have got so desperate we’re going to have to think about it.”

Speakman confirmed his position on quotas after federal Liberal Leader Sussan Ley used an address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday to highlight the need for the party to fix its entrenched gender imbalance.

Only one-third of federal Liberal MPs are women, compared to Labor’s 56 per cent.

“Now, I’m agnostic on specific methods to make it happen, but I am a zealot that it does actually happen,” Ley said. “Current approaches have clearly not worked, so I am open to any approach that will.”

She said she was open to quotas, but did not use the speech to push for them. “If some state divisions choose to implement quotas, that is fine,” Ley said. “If others don’t, that is also fine. But what is not fine is not having enough women.”

Speakman said NSW had made significant improvements to gender representation without quotas.

“At a state level, certainly I don’t think we need it at the moment, and I’m hopeful we would never need it going forward. I think there was a conscious effort to make sure that it wasn’t a boys’ club that kept excluding talented women.”

Speakman said his frontbench was also made up of 45 per cent women, but his parliamentary party was also diverse in other areas, pointing to a high number of young MPs.

“We’ve got about eight MPs under 40. So it’s important that you have renters and young home buyers as part of your decision-making. That sort of diversity of representation is important,” Speakman said.

“If you’ve got people at the table, you’re going to have better decisions with people lived experience of different issues. So I think we’ve got that and Labor doesn’t. Labor has no MPs under 35.”

In his budget reply, Speakman outlined a back-to-the-future approach, promising to reinstate former Coalition premier Dominic Perrottet’s signature housing policy to give first home buyers a choice between paying stamp duty or an annual property tax.

The short-lived scheme was scrapped when Labor came to power in 2023.

Speakman also called on Labor to restore the Active and Creative Kids vouchers, which were reduced and means tested by Labor.

The Liberal leader said in a future Coalition government he would pause developer contributions for infrastructure during the life of the National Housing Accord period, arguing the government’s new pre-sale finance guarantee confirms that developers don’t see building in many parts of Sydney as feasible.

He criticised the government for not doing enough to build new homes, pointing to an admission in the budget papers that the government’s forecast for new homes built over five years falls 137,000 short of their target.

Speakman also committed to creating a minister for artificial intelligence and launching a loan scheme for small and medium-sized businesses who want to introduce AI into their operations.

“NSW deserves better than a government that’s sleepwalking through the crises currently facing the people of NSW,” Speakman told parliament.

“You can’t just approve housing targets without a plan to support the people who will live there, and while the government claims to prioritise housing, it’s failing to provide the basic infrastructure required to support it.”

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