By Rachel Eddie and Kieran Rooney
Victorian Labor is considering overhauling its policy for getting women into parliament as the party prepares to pick candidates for next year’s state election, generating angst the number of women MPs could go backwards.
While the Liberal Party grapples with how to increase its representation of women after another wipeout at the May federal election, women make up 55 per cent of MPs in the Labor party room in the Victorian parliament.
Premier Jacinta Allan with women members of cabinet being sworn in after she took the leadership in 2023.Credit: David Crosling
Draft motions to change Victorian Labor rules have been circulated ahead of the party’s state conference next month, including a proposal from the left-aligned Electrical Trades Union to amend the state party’s gender quota policy.
As it stands, women have to be preselected in 50 per cent of held and winnable seats in each house individually. The union wants affirmative action to be calculated by combining the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council.
A party source, speaking anonymously to discuss internal party issues, said the proposal showed a misunderstanding of the policy and feared it could cut the percentage of women in the party room – especially if Labor endures a swing against it at the November 2026 election.
Another party source agreed the proposal could water down the number of women MPs by one or two seats in the Victorian parliament.
Pamela Anderson, chief executive of Labor women’s forum Emily’s List, said the existing affirmative action policy had a positive impact on the parliament.
“We will continue to advocate to ensure the rules remain as they are,” Anderson said.
The draft motion is yet to be formalised or voted on, and the proposal is likely to be withdrawn if it is doomed to fail.
The proposal would bring the state party’s affirmative action policy in line with preselections at the federal level, which combine the count across the Senate and House of Representatives.
“Labor’s affirmative action policy is one of the most significant and profound party policies that any political party in this country has introduced,” the draft motion reads.
“Victoria leads the way on [affirmative action], with almost two thirds of our cabinet being women. This has resulted in amazing policy outcomes because we know that diverse representation means better outcomes for all Victorians.
“The Victorian ALP maintains its strong commitment to [affirmative action] and the requirement for 50 per cent of our candidates in held and winnable seats to be women.”
A third source suspected Labor’s left sub-faction was seeking to replace a woman on the upper house ticket with a man.
However, others argued the proposal would simply bring the federal and state caucuses into line.
“There is no intention to undermine the broader requirement to have half the Labor caucus be female, and there never would be,” one said.
“But this is something to be spoken about on the conference floor, not through the media.”
Preselections for the state election will begin in coming months and there are concerns talented upper house MPs, including ministers, could lose their seats.
With Labor already holding a commanding majority of Victoria’s lower house, and Premier Jacinta Allan’s cratering popularity following the electoral highs of the Daniel Andrews era, there are also few seats Labor doesn’t hold in the Legislative Assembly considered truly winnable.
Jostling could result in some MPs being shuffled to safer positions.
The lower house seats held by former Labor MPs Darren Cheeseman and Will Fowles, who were forced onto the crossbench, will also be competitive given they were won by the party in 2022.
Women currently hold 58.5 per cent of Labor’s lower house seats, though this was 55.45 per cent before Cheeseman and Fowles left the party and Andrews was replaced by Eden Foster in Mulgrave.
Women make up 53 per cent of Labor’s upper house seats, with eight women and seven men.
The outcome of the motion will also have implications for Labor’s factional peace deal, which is expected to be renegotiated in coming months. Labor’s Right faction has been bolstered by the return of the Australian Workers Union into their ranks.
A non-held but winnable seat in the lower house is one in which Labor received 45 per cent or more of the vote, after preferences, at the last election. In the upper house, a winnable seat is the first on the ticket that is not already held by the party.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government was the first at the federal level for women to make up a majority.
MPs from non-European and non-Anglo-Celtic backgrounds still make up a small minority of the state Labor party room, with no affirmative action policy to preselect people from non-English-speaking backgrounds yet introduced despite stated aims to attract and support them.
Another draft motion, proposed by the Macedon-Kyneton Labor branch, calls for members to get greater rights to choose candidates that have strong local support.
The proposal, if supported, means local members could not be overruled by the party if they preselect a candidate with 60 per cent or more of the vote.
Victorian Labor declined to comment.
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