Amanda Stoker: How the LNP can win back women

Former LNP senator Amanda Stoker has spoken out about what the party needs to do to win back the female vote. JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Getting women to vote for the Liberals doesn’t need to involve “virtue signalling or identity politics” and the party has a “real opportunity” to build a policy platform which appeals to their daily struggles former Senator Amanda Stoker has said.

But Ms Stoker’s involvement in the Coalition’s repair following the 2022 federal election wipe-out will be done outside of political office, with the former assistant minister saying she didn’t see a pathway back “in the short term”.

Ms Stoker lost her Senate spot at the federal election after being relegated to the third spot on the party’s upper house ticket behind male colleagues.

There have since been calls from within the LNP to bring her back into the fold, particularly amid a growing push for more women to be elected.

Amanda Stoker. Picture: David Clark

The former senator, speaking in the lead up to the launch of her own show on Sky News, said she wouldn’t rule out a political comeback but signalled there didn’t appear to be a pathway back in the short-term.

Her show, Sunday with Stoker, debuts on January 29 (7pm AEDT/ 6pm AEST) and has been marketed as bringing “conviction and common sense to all the big issues, putting people at the heart of the debate”.

“We’re also going to be bringing in the voices … to talk about the challenging issues of the day, as well as bringing on board some new faces and developing that next generation of leaders and particularly female leaders who can help to take our country forward,” she said.

Ms Stoker has been an outspoken opponent of euthanasia and abortion and sits within the conservative section of the Liberal Party.

A preselection tussle in 2021 resulted in Senator James McGrath securing the top spot on the LNP’s upper house ticket, putting Ms Stoker at third behind Nationals-aligned colleague Matt Canavan.

A statewide swing of 4.28 per cent against the Coalition pushed her out of the Senate, but Ms Stoker said ultimately she was “grateful” to have been in office for four years.

“Democracy is a complicated thing, and it doesn’t operate the same way that a normal application does, that’s just the nature of things,” she said.

The drop in the Coalition’s vote was credited in part to female voters abandoning the Morrison government amid a strong perception the Coalition was not supportive of women.

Ms Stoker said the party needed policy which spoke to the “real and daily concerns of women”.

“That doesn’t mean virtue signalling or identity politics,” she said.

“It means understanding how hard women are working to manage the pressures of caring (for elders and children) and building a career,” she said.

“There’s a real opportunity I think to build a policy platform that speaks to the daily concerns and struggles of women and also has buy-in to their aspirations.”