Louise Roberts: Merit the best way to ensure female representation, not quotas

Women must earn their place in Parliament using their skills and knowledge and not just to make up the numbers in place of revolting MPs in Canberra, writes Louise Roberts.

If quota is the buzzword of the week, then I would argue this. What we need in Parliament is a quota of normal people.

Is it too much to ask our politicians to act like reasonable and decent human beings?

Even considering the creepy behaviour of MP Andrew “bend over so I can photograph you” Laming, it’s disturbingly obvious that having more women MPs won’t correct that type of sleazy mindset.

The much-vaunted ‘Women Problem’ we have with our federal government is less of a gender issue and more of an amoral one, with politicians paralysed by ego and power and hellbent on clinging to the narrative that victimhood is in our female DNA.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants state Liberal parties to recruit more women. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

We’ve all met workplace types like Laming, the ones that give you the chills when you walk past them and who think it’s okay to take a “completely dignified” picture of a woman in her workplace “kneeling in an awkward position and filling a fridge with an impossible amount of stock, which clearly wasn’t going to fit in the fridge”.

No. The woman in question says the inappropriate photo exposed her underwear. So why is every MP worth their expense account now heralding quotas as the panacea for Canberra Crap Pty Ltd? Including the PM himself: “We tried it the other way and it isn’t getting us the results we would like to see.”

Morrison wants the state Liberal Party divisions to recruit more women into Parliament as a way to change the culture that has disgusted us coast to coast.

Disgraced MP Andrew Laming trolled women online and took photos of them. Picture: AAP Image/Glenn Hunt

“These events have triggered, right across this building and indeed right across the country, women who have put up with this rubbish and this crap for their entire lives, as their mothers did, as their grandmothers did,” Morrison says.

“We have been talking about it in this place for a month, they have been living with it for their entire lives.

“There has never been a more important time for women to stand in this place. I want to see more women in this place. I have done many things to get more women in this place and I intend to do more.”

Yes we need more female representation but there’s only one microscope to put those candidates under — merit. Not mediocrity.

Merit is about skills and knowledge and the time you have spent acquiring these.

When we’re at the ballot box, do we want a bunch of well-off, well-connected women flooding parliament or a woman who actually stands for something and voters can identify with?

Michaelia Cash has been named attorney-general in the cabinet reshuffle. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

It’s a bit like the philosophy of chucking money at a problem — add more ladies to the candidate selection process and the issue will eventually unfurl into oblivion.

Plus it looks suspiciously like the elites fighting over the spoils.

Yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle put women first with Michaelia Cash replacing Christian Porter as Attorney General and Industry Minister Karen Andrews elevated to Minister for Home Affairs.

But no woman wants a job because they are a woman. I’ve never earned a job because I gave birth, identified as female or wore a certain bra size.

Female quotas, in fact, discriminate against men and so the whole circular argument that it helps us help them falls in a heap.

Experience and ability is what should get you appointed into a role and, if being a politician is made attractive to women, then women will stand for election.

Karen Andrews is the new home affairs minister. Picture: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

Quotas will not wipe out the cronyism or that peculiar habit amongst politicians to stockpile damage on each other.

And how would quotas fix the factional horse trading? That cud is most definitely still being chewed.

It’s politics for God’s sake.

Don’t get into the pit with the fetid players if you don’t want to get a little stinky while you fight your corner based on skill, not gender.

Could it be that there are less available women who want to sacrifice their sanity and family time to get elected to parliament?

We don’t need endless investigations or talk.

By the way, we’re not seeing a push for male teacher quotas when so many of our young men need help and protection from the misogynistic tidal wave heading their way.

We need proper, disciplined security in our halls of power, we need the revolting MPs disappeared — both men and women.