Liberal Party needs to announce alternative to quotas for women, Jane Hume says

The party needs to implement a “Liberal alternative” to getting more women in the parliamentary party, Jane Hume says.

Senator Jane Hume, left, with Julie Bishop. Picture: Ray Strange.

The Liberal Party needs to announce and implement a “Liberal alternative” to getting more women in the parliamentary party now, Victorian senator Jane Hume says.

The Victorian Liberal told The Australian today that she is still against quotas but that the party cannot wait in getting more women into the parliamentary ranks as their policy message is “getting lost.”

“I still think quotas are not the answer. It’s a Labor solution to a Liberal problem,” she said.

“But if quotas are not the answer, we need to announce and implement the Liberal alternative now.
“We need the parliamentary and organisational leadership, state and federal, to come together and start working on this. It cannot wait. It does not have to be a binary between quotas and nothing.”

Senator Hume, who avoided threats to her preselection late last year, spent a number of years before she was elected working on mentoring and scholarship programs for women in the Liberal Party.

Since the Coalition returned to power in 2013, the gender pay gap has come down to 14.5 per cent compared to 17.2 per cent under the last Labor government.

There have been reforms to childcare, paid parental leave, and a $18m boost to the Women’s Health Fund to research treatments for breast cancer, maternal health, and improving the success rate of IVF.

And the government has recently extended legal and financial protections for domestic violence victims.

But Senator Hume said she was concerned that the public only link women and the Liberal Party with parliamentary representation, rather than what she consider major policy successes for women.

“We have such good policies that have progressed the cause of women,” he said.

“Closing the gender pay gap, reforms to paid parental leave, reforms to childcare, reforms to superannuation, ensuring domestic violence victims get easier access to super and that they can’t be cross-examined by a violent partner.

“There’s more to do but a strong economy is the foundation stone for every other initiative.

“The problem is the message is getting lost because when people think of women and the Liberal Party, they think of low numbers of women in the parliamentary party.”

Nine mastheads earlier today reported that there were only nine Liberal seats left to be preselected and the Liberals were set to run their lowest number of female candidate since 2001.

That story was later removed today from Nine mastheads websites.

The Australian understands that there are actually 48 seats which have not concluded preselections and that the Liberal Party expects it will surpass the number of female candidates who ran when John Howard led the party.

At least 65 men and 22 women have so far been preselected.