Annastacia Palaszczuk prizes members above quotas

Annastacia Palaszczuk wants all Labor MPs to contest the next election, threatening to undermine party gender quota rules.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Patrick Woods.

Annastacia Palaszczuk wants all Labor MPs to contest the next election, threatening to undermine party gender quota rules.

The ALP affirmative action policy increased in 2022 and requires women to be preselected in 45 per cent of seats already held by Labor.

Women make up 40 per cent of the current caucus, meaning three men will have to retire before the 2024 state election to make way for more women.

“All of my team are doing a good job,” the Queensland Premier said. “Let me make it very clear that all of my MPs have the opportunity to contest the next­ ­election.”

Asked to clarify her position, which could undercut the gender target, Ms Palaszczuk said “Go and ask the LNP their record on women”.

“I sit there opposite them, there are hardly any women in the LNP, the LNP have a female problem, not the ALP,” she said.

Ms Palaszczuk noted her opposite number David Crisafulli in 2017 rolled sitting female MP ­Verity Barton to secure preselection in a safer Gold Coast seat.

The Opposition Leader, who supports grassroots member-­controlling preselection rather than mandated quotas, is midway through a two-week regional tour of the state to recruit female candidates.

Mr Crisafulli wants women preselected in seven of the LNP’s 14 target seats and has said he would be “held accountable” if local branches failed to back what he was pushing for. He visited Mackay, Townsville and Cairns last week to meet with potential candidates and spent Monday in Ipswich.

The ALP introduced an affirmative action policy in 1994, mandating a 35 per cent preselection quota for women in winnable seats at all elections by 2002.

In 2015, it was decided this would increase to 45 per cent by 2022 and 50 per cent from 2025.

Water Minister Glenn Butcher said sitting MPs were “doing a great job” when he was asked whether he would be willing to resign to allow a woman candidate to run for his Gladstone seat.

“Certainly we do need that representation, absolutely, but at the same time you do need to make sure we have the right people in the right job,” he said.

“Some of these things will take time – you can’t just cut and slash and change straight away.”

Police Minister Mark Ryan, first elected to state parliament in 2009, said he supported the ­affirmative action policy but wanted to contest his seat of Morayfield again.

“I am relatively youthful, not that that should be a predeterminate in the future of people in politics, but I have a lot to do in my community, I love my community and feel I am contributing significantly to the work of the government,” he said.

“We are a team and the team working together will get more women into parliament.”

Labor has a 52-person majority in Queensland parliament, of whom 31 are men and 21 are women. The LNP has 34 state MPs, of which only six are women.

The Attorney-General and Women’s Minister Shannon Fentiman said she was preselected to run for parliament 20 years after the ALP first introduced quotas.

“I benefited from the cultural change that had occurred, that supported women to run for election,” she said.

“If David Crisafulli and the LNP were serious about getting more women into parliament, they would commit to introducing quotas.”

One Labor MP, who spoke on the condition on anonymity, told the Australian: “All male MPs are affected by the AA rule, all should be aware of that.”