Not every hero wears a cape. Just ask newly promoted cabinet minister Linda Reynolds, who on the weekend boldly declared her elevation was a sure sign quotas weren’t needed in the Liberal Party.
She said she was proof positive for other Liberal women that “you don’t need to be a quota. If you’re good enough you can get in”. End of discussion. A Coalition which has just 12 women among its 74 MPs, with the almost certain reality that number will drop into single digits after the election, can rest on its laurels. Because Reynolds has made it. Other women who feel they don’t get a fair go should reflect on their own inadequacies, not the inadequacies of the Liberal Party.
Reynolds is suggesting quotas put undeserving women into the parliament or onto the frontbench. She doesn’t seem to understand that quotas actually avoid discrimination blocking the progression of talented women.
Does anyone seriously think that the likes of Penny Wong or Tanya Plibersek are undeserving just because a quota system helped them get where they are? That Reynolds, in contrast to them, got where she did on merit, yet those two are just “quota girls”?
More likely, because there are so few women in Liberal ranks when Scott Morrison went searching for women to fill his cabinet to paper over the gender failure, he had no choice but to settle for Reynolds who only entered parliament in 2016. Had there been a parliamentary quota for women in the Liberal Party — instituted over decades putting a plethora of experienced women in the mix — there would have been a far greater array of talent to choose from.
Reynolds doesn’t seem to even comprehend that elevating a disproportionate number of women into cabinet compared to the overall numbers in the parliamentary team does women in the Liberal Party a disservice. They are being used to mask the deeper problem of so few women in the Coalition’s parliamentary ranks. It is a similar tactic to the one which places a disproportionate number of women behind the dispatch box so that during Question Time it appears the government’s ranks contain more women than is actually the case.
It also allows the blokes to target women on the frontbench who are underperforming, like Michaelia Cash and Melissa Price, and turn their failures into something gender related. I know because I constantly hear such musings from Liberal blokes. They conflate the failures of the women promoted who misstep with gender.
Further, and this is the funniest reality Reynolds doesn’t comprehend, the PM has made it clear that if re-elected he’ll maintain seven women in cabinet, notwithstanding the retirement of Kelly O’Dwyer. In other words, he’ll institute his own informal quota to keep the number of women in cabinet where it currently is, despite retirements or the overall structure of his parliamentary team after the election. Despite what talent pool does or doesn’t exist among the rest of the team. That’s a quota right there. A quota for women in cabinet. Reynolds is an unwitting member.
Yet Reynolds seems to think merit is now the determining factor just because she made it. Even though the government is desperate to combat the perception it has a gender problem, and coincidentally promoted her. Slow clap for the meritorious Reynolds.
Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University
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