Angus Taylor says ‘better ways’ to fix Liberal female representation than quotas

Angus Taylor has rejected the use of quotas to achieve gender parity after the party was put on notice to increase the number of female candidates.

Senior Liberal Angus Taylor says he does not support implementing gender quotas to boost the number of women in the Liberal Party.

This comes after Sussan Ley issued orders to state branches to boost female representation before the next election.

Although the defence spokesman and former Liberal leadership challenger conceded that the party was “not getting it right” in terms of ensuring it had a “representative number of women”, he said quotas was not the answer.

“I’ve never been a supporter of quotas as a means to do that. I think there are better ways of doing that, and I’ve seen that in my own business career, making sure we attract, we retain, we mentor great people, including, of course, great women,” he said.

Instead, he said the Liberal Party needed to become “obsessed with attracting, retaining and mentoring great talent”.

Former shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said there were ‘better ways’ to boost gender equality in the Liberal Party than gender quotas. Picture: NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

While Mr Taylor wouldn’t go as far to mirror the Opposition Leader’s comments that she was a “zealot” when it cames to getting more women to join the party, he said: “I have always been a zealot for talented people.”

Mr Taylor’s comments come as the Ms Ley called on state Liberal divisions to preselect more women in winnable seats ahead of the 2028 federal election.

While she said she was “agnostic” on the specific methods to achieve better gender representations, like quotas, she left the door open for federal intervention if state divisions didn’t co-operate with her directive.

“I want to work proactively, passionately with our state divisions to achieve more women in the Liberal Party,” she told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

“What we have now is completely unacceptable. What we have done has not worked. What we need to do going forward has to be different.”

However, other members of the Liberal Party, like NSW Liberal senator Maria Kovacic, have backed short-term forced quotas in order to boost the party’s numbers.

“I believe that quotas are necessary as a short-term circuit breaker because what we’re doing at the moment hasn’t worked,” she told the ABC.

Sussan Ley wouldn’t rule out federal intervention on state divisions who weren’t able to preselect women in winnable seats. Picture: NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

“It’s clear we don’t have enough women, and we need to create a balance so that, as Sussan properly stated, we have a party that respects, reflects and represents modern Australia.”

Retired Liberal senator and former defence minister Linda Reynolds also backed temporary quotas following the Coalition’s 2022 election loss.

“I have never been a fan of quotas, as by themselves they do not deliver the reforms needed to enable permanent change to stick, and then quotas risk becoming permanent,” she wrote in 2022.

“In light of the party’s worst result since 1993, I have raised the idea of temporary quotas to kickstart wider reform.”

Originally published as Angus Taylor says ‘better ways’ to fix Liberal female representation than quotas