‘I’m the right woman for the job,’ says Linda Reynolds

Senator Linda Reynolds says her swift promotion into cabinet is not meteoric but a reflection of her 35-year army career.

Newly appointed Defence Industry Minister Linda Reynolds at Parliament House yesterday. Picture: Ray Strange.

West Australian senator Linda Reynolds, the woman Scott Morrison has put in charge of Australia’s defence industry until the election, says her swift promotion from the outer ministry into cabinet is not meteoric but a reflection of her 35-year army career.

The Army Reserve’s first female brigadier pledged there would be “continuity and certainty” for defence companies and personnel under her leadership after she replaced Steven Ciobo as Defence Industry Minister on Saturday.

Elected in 2013, Senator Reynolds began her Senate term in July 2014. She was appointed assistant home affairs minister in August last year after the leadership spill, a role she held for six months before being catapulted into cabinet.

Her elevation means there are now a record seven female cabinet ministers. “Some people have said it’s a meteoric rise and come out of nowhere but this has been a 35-year apprenticeship,” Senator Reynolds told The Australian.

Senator Linda Reynolds in her brigadier’s uniform. Picture: Supplied

“I enlisted in the army reserves aged 19 in 1984. Not only is it my diverse military career, I’ve had a strong career in border protection — no more so than when I was chief of staff to the minister for justice and customs — I’ve got a deep knowledge and understanding of national security. (I’ve been) five years in parliament — that’s not atypical (for a cabinet minister). There are a number of my colleagues who were in cabinet … within two or three years.”

An outspoken advocate for gender diversity, Senator Reynolds said she was confident there would be more Liberal women in federal parliament after the May election, despite senior women such as Kelly O’Dwyer and Julie Bishop retiring and Queensland Liberal Jane Prentice being replaced by a male candidate.

Three of the Coalition’s Senate tickets will be headed by women — including by Senator Reynolds in WA — while 44.4 per cent of new preselected candidates in the House of Representatives are female, though most are contesting marginal or safe Labor seats.

“While I would always like to see more numbers (of women), we’re not all from the cookie-­cutter trade union movement experience. We don’t have that pipeline the Labor Party does,” Senator Reynolds said.

“We have to go out and recruit. You can’t press-gang people. It’s an incredibly challenging job for men and women on the family front, as we’ve seen recently from colleagues on all sides of parliament coming out and saying it’s not parent-friendly or family-friendly or relationship-friendly.

“We have to be more visible, including people like myself. (We) have to be more visible to show younger women it is possible — you can have a career. Our behaviour in parliament and how it’s reported is a severe detractor.”

Mr Morrison has promised Senator Reynolds she will be defence minister if he wins the election but she declined to say if she would take on the shadow defence portfolio in the event of a loss.

“Neither of us are looking at the possibility of conceding defeat, absolutely not,” she said.

“This is the 11th or 12th federal campaign I’ve been involved in and I have been here before with the Liberal Party a number of times. We’ve been written off but we know what we need to do on behalf of the Australian people to gain their confidence and to win.

“That is particularly so on the issues of border protection, on the issues of defence and of course on the economy.”