Party gender quotas on Sussan Ley agenda

The federal Liberal Party’s new deputy leader says she will raise the idea of gender quotas at the next partyroom meeting.

New deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley. Picture: Simon Dallinger

The federal Liberal Party’s new deputy leader says she will raise the idea of gender quotas at the next partyroom meeting.

Former environment minister Sussan Ley on Monday became the 16th person and second woman to serve as deputy leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party, alongside new leader Peter ­Dutton.

Ms Ley has long championed the idea of quotas and previously called for a 40 per cent gender quota in preselections. “I’ll be talking about it the next time our party meets,” she told 2GB on Monday.

In 1994, the ALP adopted a mandatory 35 per cent preselection quota for women in winnable seats at all elections by 2002, increasing the quota to 40 per cent from 2012.

Liberal Party policy advocates targets rather than quotas on the basis that candidates should be preselected on “merit” alone.

The May 21 election saw Liberal men replaced with female Climate 200-backed independents in five electorates, and Ms Ley is now one of just five Liberal women left in the House of Representatives, after Katie Allen, Fiona Martin, Lucy Wicks and Celia Hammond all lost their seats.

Born in Nigeria to English parents, Ms Ley grew up in the United Arab Emirates as the daughter of a British intelligence officer father, before emigrating to Australia as a teenager.

The family initially lived near Toowoomba before moving to Canberra, where Ms Ley’s father worked for the Australian Federal Police and she completed her secondary education.

She gained a commercial pilot’s licence at 20, and has worked as a pilot, waitress, cleaner, shearer’s cook, aerial stock musterer and public servant, having attained master’s degrees in taxation and accountancy.

When she was preselected for her southern NSW seat of Farrer in 2001, she was living with her then husband and three children on their farm near Tallangatta on the Victorian side of the Murray River.

Ms Ley divorced John Ley in 2004, becoming a parliamentary secretary in the Howard government that year, before serving as a minister in the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments.