Boost women or pay the price, Credlin warns

Peta Credlin has called for the Liberal Party to establish a national body to drive the preselection of women.

Peta Credlin: ‘I was sceptical about targets’

Peta Credlin has called for the Liberal Party to establish a national body to drive the preselection of women and work with state divisions to achieve its target of a 50/50 gender balance by 2025, saying if the target is not enforced, the party will face electoral ­annihilation.

The former Liberal staffer is opposed to quotas but says work she did as Tony Abbott’s chief of staff to ensure the Coalition government reached a target of 40 per cent women on government boards proved targets could work when properly enforced.

Ms Credlin’s reiteration of an idea she first raised in a speech to Liberal women at the Canterbury Evening Discussion Group in Melbourne in May last year came amid news Scott Morrison offered dissident Victorian Liberal Julia Banks a secondment to the UN in an apparent bid to get her away from parliament.

Senior Liberal sources said Ms Banks refused the job because she wanted to be present during the current sitting fortnight.

Following last month’s spill, Ms Banks announced she would not be recontesting her marginal eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm and accused colleagues of bullying and intimidation.

The New York posting, which has previously been filled by then Liberal maverick Cory Bernardi and vocal same-sex marriage supporter Warren Entsch, would have seen Ms Banks absent from parliament for the rest of the year.

In a speech in parliament on Wednesday night, Ms Banks became the first female Liberal MP in the current parliament to call for gender quotas to be introduced in the Liberal Party, arguing that they had worked to boost numbers of women on corporate boards.

She lashed out at “appalling” behaviour in federal parliament, including “bullying and intimidation”, but did not detail the allegations or name any perpetrators.

Ms Credlin, who previously worked for Howard ministers Kay Patterson and Helen Coonan, said she opposed quotas because politics was hard enough without women being made to feel they’d got there only by a special rule.

“I was sceptical about targets. Unless they've got grunt behind them, they're wishful thinking. But having seen real targets work, I am a supporter,” the Sky News commentator told The Australian.

Ms Credlin said regular monitoring and transparency had been integral to the Abbott government achieving the 40 per cent quota on government boards.

“Rather than let lazy ministers off the hook by accepting it was all too hard to find qualified women, we built our own database of women ready for appointment, as well as using the lists from departments,” she said.

“Having a strong list of candidates ended the excuses, and publishing the progress of ministers against the target regularly in cabinet provided the transparency.

“The Coalition got to 40 per cent, the appointments were of a high calibre and we proved that targets — fair dinkum targets — do work.”

Ms Credlin said the Liberal Party must follow suit.

Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer said she had long advocated for targets, “but also, making sure that those targets are realised by having measurements along the way”.