Party in denial can’t fix gender imbalance

Failure even to acknowledge the problem shows why the Liberals alienate women.

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke.

The first step on the road to overcoming alcoholism is recognising you have a problem. Literally, step one in the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous journey is acknow­ledging you are “powerless” and need to change your ways.

Last weekend I wrote about the need for the Liberal Party to embrace quotas to overcome its gender problem. But Liberals seem unwilling to admit they even have a problem. Or are at least unable to acknowledge the scale of the problem and the multitude of failed attempts to address the gender gap without a formalised quota.

The Liberal Party is like a sad drunk unable or unwilling to face up to its problem. A government with just 12 women among its 74 House of Representatives MPs (16 per cent) is problematic, if only because it leads to fewer women voting Liberal. A party that once dominated Labor when it came to female voting patterns now trails on that score.

This week one of the few Liberal women in parliament — frontbencher Linda Reynolds — wrote an opinion piece for this newspaper explaining why she opposes gender quotas and why she can’t see the party shifting its position to support a formal quota for women. Two women in marginal seats — Sarah Henderson and Nicolle Flint — echoed the sentiments. Quotas apparently are “inconsistent with our philosophy”, according to Flint.

The government has a formal quota for the number of Nationals in a Liberal-National government as part of the Coalition agreement, but don’t let the deep inconsistency of that reality get in the way of a philosophical opposition to gender quotas. Reynolds apparently supports “equality of opportunity”, not “equality of outcomes”, because formalised quotas are “a fundamentally socialist concept and anathema to Liberal values”.

I don’t recall that philosophical underpinning to quotas when reading The Communist Manifesto or teaching the tenets of socialism in my political ideologies unit in years gone by. But perhaps I missed something. I do see socialist tendencies, however, in the family benefits packages the government supports. And in universal healthcare. But the debate over whether “Liberal values” allow such bending of principles is long over. They certainly do. Universal healthcare is all about equality of health outcomes, not equality of opportunity.

Reynolds does acknowledge that quotas can provide “a quick fix”, but says that “they do not change the structural and cultural barriers in an organisation”.

Actually that’s exactly what they do, as all the academic literature illustrates.

It’s also false to see quotas as a mere quick fix. It takes time to build towards higher quotas to ­reflect the merit of women.

Labor’s quotas only gradually grew from 35 per cent to 50 per cent. And as more women entered parliament — preceded by quotas to increase their numbers in party organisational roles — cultural change followed.

In contrast, the Liberal Party now has fewer women in its ranks than when John Howard was elected prime minister back in 1996. And if the polls stay where they are, the 12-strong Coalition team of women in the lower house will be halved, at least. Here’s why: Jane Prentice (a minister at the time) was knocked off at preselection by a bloke, not long before a prime ministerial intervention saved backbencher Craig Kelly. Ann Sudmalis is retiring from her marginal NSW seat, sick of her treatment by male factional powerbrokers. The Liberals have preselected a bloke to replace her.

Julia Banks has already quit the Liberal Party, having won the only seat the government picked off from Labor at the 2016 election. She complained of bullying during the leadership showdown.

Women’s Minister Kelly O’Dwyer told colleagues in a special partyroom meeting that the parliamentary Liberal team is perceived by the public as being a bunch of “homo­phobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers”.

Four women in the lower house are on margins of 2.8 per cent or less: Flint (2.8 per cent), Lucy Wicks (1.1 per cent), Michelle Landry (0.6 per cent) and Henderson (0.03 per cent). All four are likely to be defeated. If Landry loses, the Nationals won’t have a single lower house female MP. Ironically two of the women who this week defended their party as doing the right thing by females will probably lose their marginal seats. If the Coalition finds a way to contain the national swing to just 3 per cent — rather than the more than 5 per cent the last two Newspolls suggest is on the cards — the low representation of women in the Liberal Party across the country will be staggering. Only one female Liberal MP will represent each of Victoria, NSW and Queensland. No Liberal women in the lower house will represent South Australia, Tasmania or either of the territories.

Given all that, denying the need for radical action to increase female representation in parliament is unbelievable, whether that action is a quota or some alternative with teeth. So far no such alternative has been offered, only platitudes. And the two biggest state divisions of the Liberal Party — NSW and Victoria — moved centrally to re-endorse all sitting MPs preselections, even though both states are desperately in need of more women MPs.

Liberals crow that they have preselected a number of women as candidates, but almost all of them are in unwinnable seats. In other words, it’s meaningless.

Even someone such as O’Dwyer is in the line of fire, despite her 10 per cent margin. Ironically, the Minister for Women’s inner-city seat of Higgins is a problematic hold for the government because of the gender problems Liberals face — one of the reasons Wentworth fell to Kerryn Phelps, after a prime ministerial plea for a woman to win preselection in the seat fell on deaf ears.

Quotas for winnable seats (Labor’s policy) ensure women don’t come and go with the electoral tide, as occurs in the Coal­ition. They build careers and seniority. That is how quotas build the sort of cultural change Reynolds claims they do not.

While the Liberal Party certainly has a problem with women, its problems go deeper. Peter Costello lightheartedly said this week he wasn’t sure he would even win preselection for the modern Liberal Party: “I don’t know if I’ve got the right views anymore.”

It took Costello 10 words rather than a three-word slogan to make his devastating point. If someone like him takes that view about what the Liberal Party has become, just imagine how disconnected swinging voters must feel.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.