Libs’ affirmative reaction may be too little too late

Women. like Kelly O’Dwyer, “who have made it to cabinet rank over the past couple of years have been like skyrockets” Picture: Sam Mooy/AAP

Watching Liberal MP Alex Hawke pave the way for the Liberal Party to introduce a quota system for preselecting women was to realise that the Liberals are belatedly conceding they do indeed have a problem with women.

While Labor introduced an ­affirmative action program back in 1996, the Liberals persisted with the line that women would have to be selected on merit alone. All they achieved with that act of blind faith was to give Scott Morrison a headache he didn’t need.

Now the Prime Minister wants to surround himself with women and girls in his photo-ops. That was never going to work. It amazes me how the Liberal Party stubbornly refuses to fix this serious electoral disadvantage. It had to announce that a woman had been selected to fill the vacancy in cabinet — and it will need to introduce a quota system with equal alacrity.

Women who have made it to cabinet rank over the past couple of years have been like skyrockets.

Michaelia Cash will never recover from the dramas involved in the 2017 Australian Federal Police raid on the Australian Workers Union offices in Melbourne.

Julie Bishop threw her toys out of the cot when few of her colleagues thought she would make a good leader. And Kelly O’Dwyer seems to believe she will be happier looking after her young children full-time, and good luck to her.

Blokes are leaving too, of course, because they can see the writing on the wall. If you have been a powerful minister replete with a large staff and a white car at your beck and call, a likely six years in opposition hardly looks attractive. I’ll be sad to see the end of Christopher Pyne’s career because his capacity to be totally outrageous made him very different from the grey-haired, blue-suited lot who surround him. Michael Keenan, hardly known outside his home state, was a sound thinker whose wisdom will be missed.

Not much has been going well for Morrison recently. Newspoll’s 53-47 per cent two-party-preferred result is sticking with Labor, and has been way too consistent for too long to be ignored. It would, however, be more appropriate for Bill Shorten to refrain from commenting on current or future diplomatic posts until the election is held and all the votes are counted.