Liberals need more women but this tokenistic fix is no way to go

It’s insulting to Katherine O’Regan to suggest men should stand aside to make way for her. Picture; AAP.

The Liberal Party is doing its best to muck up the Wentworth preselection in precisely the same fashion that Coalition governments in NSW and Canberra have lost their way — by dancing to the tune of their critics. The conservative side of politics is supposed to stand up for its values and eschew political fashion. When it follows Labor down the path of poll-driven politicking and attempts to assuage its progressive critics in the media, it is on the road to ruin.

A last minute push to preselect a female candidate for the Wentworth by-election is precisely the sort of reactive, media-driven and factionally-orchestrated result the party should avoid. The core values of the party dictate it do no more than choose the very best candidate — man or woman. The party membership and the voters of Wentworth deserve no less and they will see right through any patronising move to do otherwise.

Let me be clear, the Liberals need more women in parliament and in senior positions, too. But you cannot make up for a decade of dereliction in this task with a quick, tokenistic fix. The Liberals should always reject quotas because they contradict the values of intellectual integrity, individual merit and equality of opportunity the party should hold dear. So fixing the so-called women problem involves the hard yards of recruiting, nurturing and promoting more women on merit, not a quick fix in Wentworth.

What an insult it is for the two women in the Wentworth contest, Mary-Lou Jarvis and Katherine O’Regan, to suggest the men should clear the field to make way for them. If either is to win now they will be tainted. Andrew Bragg was an impressive candidate but clearly withdrew because he was worried polling showed the by-election might not be winnable. He used the promotion of a female candidate as a virtue-signalling cover for pulling out.

But the narrative has been taken up in the media and apparently senior party operatives are now putting pressure on other male candidates to withdraw. This is not democracy or merit-based selection; this is factional interference to concoct a gender-based outcome.

What is worse is that this is dictated not by a long-term strategy or concerns about gender equality but by short-term politicking that has been dictated by media coverage about bullying in politics. A party still smarting from a leadership conflagration has seen some female MPs make opaque claims about bullying against their internal political enemies and they have been amplified by the ABC and ALP without interrogation.

Those allegations ought to be dealt with on their merits. Leaning on men to withdraw from a preselection contest does not cut it as a response of integrity, consistency or forethought.

I happen to know many of the Wentworth contenders to varying degrees and they all have their merits.

Dave Sharma is a former workmate who I count as a friend. He is a 42-year-old Indian Australian who went to public high school at Turramurra and scored a TER of 100. He is seriously smart; smart enough to go from that suburban high school directly into Cambridge University where he received first class honours in law, which he followed up in Australia with a masters in international relations (high distinction).

A self-starter, Dave won a place at the department of foreign affairs, served as a peacekeeper in Bouganville and received an Australian Service Medal. He rose to senior positions in the public service, was legal adviser to the foreign minister (when I worked with him) and was posted to Washington. Later he became our youngest ambassador to Israel, managing to secure the first visit to Australia by an Israeli Prime Minister.

He has returned to Sydney with his wife and three daughters to launch a business career. Dave is a terrific bloke with superb skills, character, experience and values.

The pre-selectors of Wentworth will make up their own minds as they consider a strong field of candidates. But the idea that a political party would reject someone like Dave based on his genitalia is just too silly and condescending for words. If the Liberals choose to deny themselves and the national parliament the very best candidates to try to placate the identity politics used against them by their enemies, then they have lost touch with their core values and will suffer accordingly.