Libs’ women problem turns out to be liberal women

Julia Banks and Julie Bishop in the back row of the lower house. Picture: Getty Images

It pays not to take at face value claims by some female Liberals that the Liberal Party has a problem with women. Nor claims that the Liberal Party is full of men who bully female politicians. Or claims that the party has a “women problem”. The truth, as always, is far more complicated. One thing is certain: there is a simmering civil war among Liberal female MPs.

The Australian has obtained screen shots of recent WhatsApp conversations among female ­Coalition MPs. The group — open to women only — ­includes senior Liberals such as Julie Bishop, newcomers such as Amanda Stoker and everyone between: Linda Reynolds, Sarah Henderson, Kelly O’Dwyer, Bridget McKenzie, Karen Andrews, Lucy Wicks, Melissa Price, Nola Marino, Anne Ruston, ­Nicolle Flint, Sussan Ley, Jane Prentice, Jane Hume, Julia Banks (she left the group a few weeks ago), Lucy Gichuhi (she left last Friday), Ann Sudmalis, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Marise Payne, Michelle Landry and Michaelia Cash.

Imagine if there were a Coalition men-only WhatsApp. That aside, the WhatsApp conversation — from Monday, September 3, until Wednesday, September 6 — gives a truer picture about claims of bullying within the Liberal Party. Liberal women are deeply divided over the issue.

On one side, a small group of vocal women is intent on building momentum, geeing each other up and trying to portray bullying as clear-cut and systemic. It kicked off with Banks, who says she will resign at the next election, claiming she had been bullied during her short time in Canberra. Like a relay team, O’Dwyer, Bishop and others have kept the claims going with interviews, speeches and corridor asides.

On WhatsApp, Reynolds ­applauds O’Dwyer with a nice clapping hands emoji and “brava on 7.30 tonight”. Gichuhi pips in with “Goodwork kelly” and Price posts more clapping hands and “Well done Kell”.

Reynolds then posts this: ­“Ladies Lucy, Julia and Kelly need our moral support.” She ends her lengthy call to arms with “The question is how!?”. Bishop then tells the group “Perhaps I’ll have some insights” when she speaks at the women’s forum the next day. (She did, repeating claims of bullying, but no names, no particulars.) Reynolds responds to Bishop’s ­recurring red shoe emoji with a red boxing glove emoji.

Then dissent emerges in the WhatsApp women-only ranks. Stoker says: “Of course, if there’s a complaint of bullying to be made, it should be particularised and fully investigated, but our avenue for doing that is through the whip’s office, not through the media or in the chamber.”

What then follows is a curious silence from those who were using clapping hands, red shoes and ­boxing glove emojis. Maybe they set up another WhatsApp group ­solely for women like them.

The episode sounds like a grab from the teenage cult movie Mean Girls. Except these are grown women masquerading as cool girls, speaking the same way, treating other women with contempt to the point of not making eye contact with those who won’t repeat their bullying mantra.

The Australian has learned that Stoker is among other Liberal female MPs who have had enough of this increasingly bogus campaign. They have remained honourably quiet in the hope that new Prime Minister Scott Morrison be given a chance to get on with the job of unifying a fractured party and giving voters a genuine choice at the next election. Now they are fed up, frustrated and, frankly, disgusted that the same Liberal women who have made public complaints about bullying are now bullying other female Liberal MPs to join their cause.

They are appalled too that women such as Banks have publicly slammed the party, pointing to “appalling behaviour” but providing no names, no specifics about who did what to whom. Where is the procedural justice in asserting a systemic culture of bullying with no evidence? Sadly, their procedural unfairness is fully supported by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, who told ABC Radio National that naming names really isn’t necessary. Even the most vociferous ­activists in the #MeToo movement named names and laid out particulars.

What is the endgame for Liberal women aboard the bullying bandwagon? To give voters a reason not to vote Liberal at the next federal election? Plenty are now questioning the ulterior motives, hidden agendas and wounded pride of women who are incensed that politics didn’t turn out the way they hoped, and disgruntled that their careers are on the downward slide.

While the behaviour of Banks is no surprise, Bishop is more disappointing. Not so long ago, she carried herself with grace and strength. She gave a classy press conference when she resigned as foreign minister. Since then it has been a different Bishop, giggling alongside parliamentary chamber neighbour Banks from the back row of the lower house.

Bishop was a genuine team member, a tireless campaigner and terrific fundraiser. She was ­entitled to feel miffed that the moderates in the party didn’t support her when the leadership was thrown open. Eliminated in the first round with 11 votes, she was humiliated. Many women, moderate and conservative, wanted to vote for her. But in the end, her perfunctory phone call to them to drum up support failed to address policy. Her claim to the leadership was too one-dimensional: she was foreign minister, deputy ­leader and a woman.

Sadly, Bishop’s new alignment with a group of women who refuse to name bullies or set out specifics does nothing for female progress in her party. Instead, it presents women as petty and vindictive. And it damages a party that Bishop once did so much to support.

The WhatsApp comments suggest a wider civil war among Liberal women over gender targets and quotas — not helped by the weekend gobbledygook from federal party president Nick Greiner. If the party and its president ­focused on what it stood for rather than on who stands for preselection, it might attract real talent.

The Liberal Party — elected with a thumping majority in 2013 and re-elected in 2016 — does now have a women’s problem: a group of disgruntled Liberal women ­intent on whipping up a crisis at any cost.