Rita Panahi: Gender quotas a misguided attempt at ‘equity’

The simple, undeniable truth is that gender quotas undermine women who get to the top on merit.

After months of near hysterical, relentlessly negative media coverage of gender issues in Australia, including the push for the Liberal party to adopt gender quotas we have some rationality and perspective.

The Liberals For Merit campaign will see senior women within the party, including federal MPs, take a stand against those pushing for the party to embrace mandatory quotas in some misguided attempt at ‘equity’.

Note I said equity, not equality.

Nicole Flint. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The merit campaign has more than 200 NSW State Council delegates, around half of them female, who have “voiced their opposition to quotas” including state and federal MPs such as Anne Ruston, Claire Chandler, Robyn Preston, Nicolle Flint, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Dr Fiona Martin, Eleni Petinos and Amanda Stoker.

“We believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome — it’s the simplest way for me to explain why I will always be opposed to quota,” said Flint.

The simple, undeniable truth is that quotas undermine women who get there on merit.

Weak, unprincipled faux-conservatives who push quotas to appease the media and activist class should be shunned.

A candidate’s character and capability are more important than their genitalia; quotas only corrupt the selection process.

Conservatives should never flirt with regressive, identity politics-centred policies that they have long derided.

You either have a meritocracy or you have quotas, you cannot have both.

OUR GOVERNMENT FAILING CITIZENS IN TIME OF CRISIS

Being an Australian citizen should mean something.

At the very least it should see your country come to your assistance at a time of crisis, but the Australian government has turned its back on about 9000 citizens stranded in India.

What’s worse it has banned them from entering Australia, essentially trapping them in a Third World country with a substandard health system during a pandemic.

When coronavirus was raging in Wuhan early last year, the Australian government brought back planeloads of Australian citizens and residents from the virus epicenter and had them quarantine on Christmas Island, away from the mainland.

That was before we charged returned travellers for the cost of quarantine so the only cost to those who came home via Christmas Island was about $1000 each for flights.

The Christmas Island solution was a highly successful intervention, though we did have the usual race-baiting blowhards on the ABC and elsewhere claiming those returning travellers were treated unfairly because most were of Chinese heritage.

The Christmas Island solution was a highly successful intervention.

Of course it had nothing to do with race and everything to do with minimising risk.

And, there is no good reason why we can’t employ similar measures to safely repatriate the thousands of Australians trapped in India.

The capacity at Christmas Island is typically about 1000 but it has held up to 3000 people at once.

We also have a number of remote detention facilities which could be re-purposed if the government does not want city-based hotel quarantine used for high risk arrivals from India.

Fifteen months into this crisis and we still have tens of thousands of Australians stranded around the world unable to enter their own country.

Even the UN Human Rights Committee has slammed Australia for our failure to uphold the rights of our citizens.

Top human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, representing two Australian men, Jason George and Alex (surname withheld), filed a complaint with UNHRC arguing the federal government had breached the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his (or her) own country”.

Earlier this month the UNHRC directed Australia to “facilitate and ensure” the return of the stranded Australian.

If Australian citizens are willing to undergo two weeks of quarantine, and be billed for the expense, plus undergo COVID-19 tests before being released, then every effort should be made to facilitate their prompt return home.

Australia has seen more than 250,000 overseas arrivals go through hotel quarantine. Picture: Ian Currie

NSW has done the bulk of the heavy lifting in taking back the most overseas arrivals through hotel quarantine. And, they have managed to do it without ever locking down Sydney or NSW or imposing draconian restrictions. We must do better as a nation and the finger pointing between the federal and state governments will do nothing to assist a single Australian to return home safely.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to halt all flight from India until at least May 15 will no doubt be popular with many voters.

Throughout this pandemic we’ve seen scaremongering and irrational fears cloud people’s judgment and sense of compassion.

Australia has seen more than 250,000 overseas arrivals go through hotel quarantine and only Victoria botched its program so badly that it led to hundreds of deaths and a 112-day lockdown.

We can take more people safely by following NSW’s gold standard which is currently processing just over 3,000 arrivals per week.

We should ensure that every Australian who wants to come back is allowed to do promptly, not because the UNHRC has ordered it, but because it’s the least a nation can do for those who hold the privilege of citizenship.

Having our citizens die in a foreign country would amount to a shameful dereliction of duty.