May 7, 2025 • 18 mins
Since the Liberal Party’s election wipeout, Liberals, and their media allies, have turned to sources of conservative wisdom, including Margaret Thatcher, in search of guidance.
But, as our political and international editor, Peter Hartcher, writes: “I haven’t seen any of them citing Thatcher’s 1975 observation: ‘In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman'."
Today, Peter Hartcher joins me to discuss when the Liberal Party’s women problem first began. And whether the party is destined for extinction.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Sellenger Morris. It's Thursday,
May 8th. Since the Liberal Party's election wipeout, liberals and
their media allies have turned to sources of conservative wisdom,
(00:22):
including Margaret Thatcher, in search of guidance. But as our
political and international editor Peter Hartcher writes, I haven't seen
any of them, citing Thatcher's 1975 observation in politics if
you want anything, said, ask a man. If you want
anything done, ask a woman. Today, Peter Hartcher joins me
(00:43):
to discuss when the Liberal Party's women problem first began
and whether the party is destined for extinction. Okay, Peter,
I was hoping you could take us back to when
this problem between the Liberal Party and Australian women began.
Because we know that the party itself was formed in
part through the efforts of highly organized and powerful women's groups,
(01:05):
and the party's founder, Robert Menzies, directed that specific leadership
roles be reserved for women. So I guess maybe start
there before we then get into what happened.
S2 (01:15):
What's gone wrong? Yeah. Menzies designed the Liberal Party to
be a party big enough for everyone, including women and women,
were an essential part, he thought, a vital part of
the Liberal Party from the very beginning. The first woman
to enter the House of Representatives was for the Liberal Party,
Enid Lyons. The first labor woman was Dorothy Tangney, who
(01:36):
entered the Senate at the same election as Enid Lyons
in 1943. But the two parties diverge there because when
Dorothy Tangney eventually retired from Parliament in 1968, she was
still the only labor woman in the parliament, but there
were five Liberal women in the parliament by then, and
there was a reason that the Liberal Party put a
(01:58):
huge emphasis on women, apart from wanting to be a
successful political party and wanting to appeal to half the country. Yeah,
that's a small detail. Yeah.
S1 (02:06):
No biggie.
S2 (02:07):
That's right. And they didn't have to rediscover the existence
of this exotic species called women. That's right. They knew
it from the from the outset. One of the big
philosophical reasons is that this was the era when communism
was the big threat. And Menzies was the anti-communist, the
staunch anti-communist campaigner against what he saw as labor and
(02:27):
its pernicious subjugation to to socialism and communism. And women
were seen to be a more conservative, socially conservative force,
and therefore politically conservative than Labour. So that's why it
was so important to the early Liberal Party to make
sure women were on side. And they were. The Labour
(02:48):
Party really only caught up on the whole women thing
in the 1990s. So it's a recent phenomenon that the
Liberal Party has failed to appeal to women and Labour
Party has succeeded.
S1 (03:02):
Okay, so I'm going to get into what happened at
the election. But when did it start to go wrong?
The Liberal Party obviously had that incredible beginning, I guess
with regards to women. So when did it start to
go seriously wrong?
S2 (03:14):
The peak of the Liberal women's vote, where the Liberal
Party had its greatest share of women voting for it,
was in 1996. Howard era and as recently as 2001.
I suppose that's recent. Most women still voted liberal, and
(03:34):
it's just continued to decline from 1996 onwards. It's been gradual,
but it's accelerated. So at the last election, we know
from the Australian Electoral Study produced out of the Anu,
that only about a third of Australian women voted for
the Liberal Party. Yet women make up by a slim
(03:57):
margin the majority of the country. So how can the
Liberal Party hope to win office again. And then at
this latest election, we don't know for sure, but indications
are it was around the same and perhaps a little less.
And once again, two consecutive elections now where women of
every age group voted in majority Labour and not Liberal.
(04:20):
The liberals, in other words, can't get women of any
age to vote for them in majority anymore.
S1 (04:25):
And just before we move on, was there anything that
happened around 96, 2001? Was there any sort of major
scandal or anything that sort of sparked the women's turn
away from the Liberal Party or not really?
S2 (04:36):
Not really. It was, um, it was a gradual transformation
of the Liberal Party. One of the big debates you'll
remember in in Howard and the transition then to Rudd was, um,
climate change, where Howard initially resisted recognising the problem or
(04:57):
doing anything about it, whereas Labour campaigned on it. And
ultimately it was a big vote winner for Labour, for Rudd.
And it was such a compelling case politically, to do
something about it, that Howard changed his position and came
on board at the last minute before the 2007 election.
Women are seen to be more concerned about the environment
(05:18):
than men. And so that was a big and enduring influence.
Can I just point out that that in 2018, Kelly O'Dwyer,
who was a cabinet minister in in successive Liberal governments,
she famously told the Liberal Party room that they were seen.
(05:39):
The liberals were seen in the general public as being homophobic, anti-women,
climate deniers. That's devastating. Now, if if she were to
update that today about the Liberal Party's image, I think
we can probably assume that she would say the Liberal
Party today is seen as being transphobic, Anti-women climate deniers.
(06:05):
Now that is a deadly cocktail. And the party has
completely failed to deal with with the problem that their
own cabinet minister pointed out to them seven years ago.
S1 (06:16):
Okay, so tell us, just how bad is the result then,
with regards to female Liberal MPs in Parliament now compared to, say, Labour?
S2 (06:23):
Well, although they had an internal review and recommendation ten
years ago recommending that they put up 50% of women
candidates for pre-select, 50% of women candidates for federal parliament.
They went to this latest election with only a third.
So it was already destined to fail. And of that third,
(06:47):
only a few were actually preselected for or had winnable
so-called winnable seats. And now, as the vote count is
coming in, it's still unfolding. We don't have the full results,
but it looks like there'll be 40 or so. Liberal
MPs in the House of those there. It's shaping up
(07:08):
that there will be maybe five women. Wow. Five out
of 40.
S1 (07:12):
And then in comparison, you've got, you know, Labour. All
seven newly minted Labour MPs in Queensland are women.
S2 (07:18):
Yes, it could be a bit of a clue there.
The other clue that the Liberal Party might pick up
is that in the last, in the last two elections,
excluding Saturdays, they lost seven Liberal heartland formerly Liberal heartland
seats to teal so-called teal independents. Every one of them
was a woman. Every one of them. Another little clue
there that the liberal heartland was electing women who cared
(07:43):
about guess what their number one priority was? Women. Number two,
climate change. Number three integrity. And the Liberal Party ignored,
just ignored all of these signs, their own internal recommendations
for year after year. And now we've reached the culmination point.
Or maybe, maybe it hasn't yet culminated. Maybe if they
(08:04):
fail to act on this problem, it could get worse.
They could become an extinct party like the Australian Democrats
or the Communist Party or the DLP. It's possible this
is how political change happens.
S1 (08:18):
Wow. That's incredible. And you know, you pointed out in
your column that Peter Dutton's campaign specifically was very male centric.
You know, he was constantly photographed driving trucks, pumping petrol
in cars, wearing hi vis. You know, it was sort
of like the fast and the furious, minus the muscles
and the bikini clad women.
S2 (08:34):
And it was furious without the fast.
S3 (08:36):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So was it really his policies.
S1 (08:39):
That did him in specifically.
S3 (08:41):
At this election?
S1 (08:41):
You know, as opposed to the optics, obviously weren't great
in terms of appealing to women, perhaps.
S2 (08:45):
Well, it was both. So it was the party organization
only putting up preselecting a third of their candidates as women.
It was the policy offering and the single most powerful
signal to women that the Liberal Party weren't interested in
them was the working from home policy, which the liberals
announced a bit over a month before the campaign proper
(09:07):
kicked in. And it was it was very deliberate. Jane
Hume launched it with a speech where she set up
the whole argument for it, in which, by the way,
there was no evidence that the policy was to require
all federal public servants based in Canberra to come to
the office five days a week. And it was a
great long speech she gave about it. The only evidence
(09:29):
was a one research paper from Stanford University in the
US talking about a different country in a different system,
not the Australian public service. And based on that, they
announced this policy. It sent a huge signal that the
party was anti-women, of course, because women have benefited so
much from working from home. And although the policy itself
(09:50):
only applied to the federal public service, it just sent
the signal that the Liberal Party is against working from home.
And if they're going to start with the federal public service,
where does it end? So that was a huge problem.
And then that just kept rolling through into the campaign
and the optics and the whole the whole whole disaster.
S1 (10:10):
And it's safe to say that women really did revolt.
I think I saw some research put out by Redbridge
which said that in February they polled people in 20
key marginal seats. The first wave found that Dutton had
a net approval rating of -11 among women, and then
by late April it was down to -28 among women.
And it wasn't nearly as bad among the men.
S2 (10:30):
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
S1 (10:31):
So they just really turned against him, I guess, in response. Okay.
S2 (10:35):
And so isn't it interesting that even in spite of that,
the debate this week about who to replace Peter Dutton
with two of the three leading names are men. I mean,
that would be crazy. We'll see what they do.
S1 (10:50):
Well, this is what I kind of wanted to ask
you about, because we know that five out of seven
leadership positions in the coalition are women, and I think
it's safe to say most of them were pretty much
invisible during the campaign. Like, do you reckon that's a
directive that came from Peter Dutton? What was that about?
S2 (11:02):
Well, Susan Lee, the deputy leader. She she was pretty visible,
but that's very much the exception, right.
S1 (11:10):
Yeah.
S2 (11:11):
The story. Yeah. And so she's because she was the
deputy leader. Yeah. She is now being talked about as
the only woman possibility to to lead the Liberal Party. Um,
they could do worse. They could do worse. But, um,
whoever is the first to take the leadership after this
devastating wipeout will have to be prepared to be sacrificed
(11:32):
on the altar of, um, of a party that's lost
its way. It's going to be full of angry recriminations.
So if whoever is anointed initially is unlikely to get
through to the next election. So if they put Susan
Lee up, she might not make it that far. But
we'll see.
S1 (11:50):
Okay, so why did all of this happen? I'm just
wondering because, you know, we know that the party had
its own internal review after the 2022 election, and it
revealed much of what we've already talked about. You know,
that the Liberal Party was failing to appeal to female
voters and that yes, it should pre-select women in 50%
of seats. So did they just ignore it?
S2 (12:09):
Yes they did.
S1 (12:10):
Why, though?
S2 (12:11):
They'd rather be comfortable with their existing boys club and
the factional system that has produced that. It's a lot.
A lot of the blame for this falls on the
factional system which reproduces more of its own right. It's
reproducing itself.
S1 (12:25):
Yes.
S2 (12:26):
They'd rather do that than succeed. They would rather become
extinct than change their behaviour to actively include women.
S1 (12:35):
Okay, now that would seem, on the face of it,
to be so irrational. It is. So why do you
have any insight into why? Why? I mean, I understand,
you know, human nature. We can all be a bit
resistant to change. It can be a bit painful. But
if you're constantly getting information that this is and, you know, obviously,
like you say, this has been a slow dying, I guess,
for the party. And they've been indicated for so long,
(12:56):
this is the problem. Why would you avoid it?
S2 (13:00):
It's a simple fact of people. Networks of allies and influence.
Seeking to reward itself and therefore reproduce itself. So it
requires a drastic intervention. And remember, the state divisions are
responsible for the Pre-selections and the state division, especially New
(13:24):
South Wales and Victoria, have been in a state of
total disarray. Factional war, you'll remember in New South Wales,
the Liberal Party state division couldn't even do the paperwork
to nominate candidates for local local government elections across the
entire state. There was not a single Liberal candidate for
any local council.
S1 (13:45):
Okay, so here's my question then. Because like you say,
there's been this very long term resistance to change. You know,
obviously people don't want to lose their power. Well, I
guess the question is, is gender quotas going to be
a real answer for them? Because we know that labor
introduced gender quotas some 30 years ago. So I guess
tell me a bit about what that process was like
for labor. And, you know, whether you think quotas or
what really might change the fortunes for the coalition, I guess.
S2 (14:08):
Well, there was a lot of resistance in the Labor
Party because the whole concept was seen as being anti merit.
We just do our pre-selections on merit. And but again,
it was the real argument was the factions just wanted
to continue doing what they'd always been doing and they
had to be forced to change their ways. And that's
(14:30):
what labor did. They imposed the quota and it's worked.
So at the last federal election, there were just under 50%
of the successful MPs that went into Parliament were for labor,
were women. And at this election, it's going to be
a little over. It looks like about 54% of the
labor caucus in the House this time is going to
(14:54):
be women. So it's really worked. Now, as you know, Samantha,
the liberal argument is we're not going to do that
because we're the party of freedom, of individual Dual responsibility
of merit and of choice. We're not going to put
a quota on ourselves. This is a pretext. This is nonsense,
because the coalition imposes a quota at the core of
(15:16):
its existence, which is with the National Party. They have
a rigid formula about how many nationals will be in
the frontbench in the cabinet of a coalition government. So
this is a this is a group of people who
work very happily and successfully. Well, let me rephrase that.
They work very happily with a quota at the core
(15:38):
of their organisation. So it's a straw man argument.
S4 (15:43):
So do you think there is.
S1 (15:44):
Fundamentally some sort of anti-woman attitude or belief system then
at work.
S2 (15:48):
I thought it was really revealing that the party, when
it was faced with a choice of leader between Julie
Bishop and Scott Morrison, chose Scott Morrison.
S1 (16:03):
And not only did they choose Scott Morrison. But in
the most humiliating of ways, I think Julie Bishop got
something like 11 votes in her favour or something. I mean,
it was it was horrible. Right.
S2 (16:13):
It was it's bizarre because she was by far the
most popular. Her approval rating among coalition MPs was head
and shoulders above any of the others. She had a
high profile. She was actually competent. Maybe that's why they
found her so threatening. So that was as the teal
(16:33):
independent from the West Australian seat of Curtin, which was
Julie Bishop's former seat. Kate Cheney has said that was
a sliding doors moment that showed her and many, many women,
that this was a party that was basically, as you've
just suggested, Samantha, it's at its core, is sexist. They
simply did not want a woman leader, and they got
(16:56):
Scott Morrison to get what you deserve.
S1 (17:00):
Never a dull moment with you, Peter Hartcher.
S2 (17:02):
Well, we've been given this rich fodder. Bye bye. The
electoral outcome to work with. And it's a it's a
remarkable one.
S1 (17:10):
Well, thank you so much as always, Peter, for your time.
S2 (17:13):
It's a pleasure, Samantha.
S1 (17:17):
Today's episode was produced by myself, Josh Towers and Julia Karkazis,
with technical assistance by Taylor Dent. Our executive producer is
Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To
listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow
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(17:39):
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the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Sellenger Morris. It's Thursday,
May 8th. Since the Liberal Party's election wipeout, liberals and
their media allies have turned to sources of conservative wisdom,
(00:22):
including Margaret Thatcher, in search of guidance. But as our
political and international editor Peter Hartcher writes, I haven't seen
any of them, citing Thatcher's 1975 observation in politics if
you want anything, said, ask a man. If you want
anything done, ask a woman. Today, Peter Hartcher joins me
(00:43):
to discuss when the Liberal Party's women problem first began
and whether the party is destined for extinction. Okay, Peter,
I was hoping you could take us back to when
this problem between the Liberal Party and Australian women began.
Because we know that the party itself was formed in
part through the efforts of highly organized and powerful women's groups,
(01:05):
and the party's founder, Robert Menzies, directed that specific leadership
roles be reserved for women. So I guess maybe start
there before we then get into what happened.
S2 (01:15):
What's gone wrong? Yeah. Menzies designed the Liberal Party to
be a party big enough for everyone, including women and women,
were an essential part, he thought, a vital part of
the Liberal Party from the very beginning. The first woman
to enter the House of Representatives was for the Liberal Party,
Enid Lyons. The first labor woman was Dorothy Tangney, who
(01:36):
entered the Senate at the same election as Enid Lyons
in 1943. But the two parties diverge there because when
Dorothy Tangney eventually retired from Parliament in 1968, she was
still the only labor woman in the parliament, but there
were five Liberal women in the parliament by then, and
there was a reason that the Liberal Party put a
(01:58):
huge emphasis on women, apart from wanting to be a
successful political party and wanting to appeal to half the country. Yeah,
that's a small detail. Yeah.
S1 (02:06):
No biggie.
S2 (02:07):
That's right. And they didn't have to rediscover the existence
of this exotic species called women. That's right. They knew
it from the from the outset. One of the big
philosophical reasons is that this was the era when communism
was the big threat. And Menzies was the anti-communist, the
staunch anti-communist campaigner against what he saw as labor and
(02:27):
its pernicious subjugation to to socialism and communism. And women
were seen to be a more conservative, socially conservative force,
and therefore politically conservative than Labour. So that's why it
was so important to the early Liberal Party to make
sure women were on side. And they were. The Labour
(02:48):
Party really only caught up on the whole women thing
in the 1990s. So it's a recent phenomenon that the
Liberal Party has failed to appeal to women and Labour
Party has succeeded.
S1 (03:02):
Okay, so I'm going to get into what happened at
the election. But when did it start to go wrong?
The Liberal Party obviously had that incredible beginning, I guess
with regards to women. So when did it start to
go seriously wrong?
S2 (03:14):
The peak of the Liberal women's vote, where the Liberal
Party had its greatest share of women voting for it,
was in 1996. Howard era and as recently as 2001.
I suppose that's recent. Most women still voted liberal, and
(03:34):
it's just continued to decline from 1996 onwards. It's been gradual,
but it's accelerated. So at the last election, we know
from the Australian Electoral Study produced out of the Anu,
that only about a third of Australian women voted for
the Liberal Party. Yet women make up by a slim
(03:57):
margin the majority of the country. So how can the
Liberal Party hope to win office again. And then at
this latest election, we don't know for sure, but indications
are it was around the same and perhaps a little less.
And once again, two consecutive elections now where women of
every age group voted in majority Labour and not Liberal.
(04:20):
The liberals, in other words, can't get women of any
age to vote for them in majority anymore.
S1 (04:25):
And just before we move on, was there anything that
happened around 96, 2001? Was there any sort of major
scandal or anything that sort of sparked the women's turn
away from the Liberal Party or not really?
S2 (04:36):
Not really. It was, um, it was a gradual transformation
of the Liberal Party. One of the big debates you'll
remember in in Howard and the transition then to Rudd was, um,
climate change, where Howard initially resisted recognising the problem or
(04:57):
doing anything about it, whereas Labour campaigned on it. And
ultimately it was a big vote winner for Labour, for Rudd.
And it was such a compelling case politically, to do
something about it, that Howard changed his position and came
on board at the last minute before the 2007 election.
Women are seen to be more concerned about the environment
(05:18):
than men. And so that was a big and enduring influence.
Can I just point out that that in 2018, Kelly O'Dwyer,
who was a cabinet minister in in successive Liberal governments,
she famously told the Liberal Party room that they were seen.
(05:39):
The liberals were seen in the general public as being homophobic, anti-women,
climate deniers. That's devastating. Now, if if she were to
update that today about the Liberal Party's image, I think
we can probably assume that she would say the Liberal
Party today is seen as being transphobic, Anti-women climate deniers.
(06:05):
Now that is a deadly cocktail. And the party has
completely failed to deal with with the problem that their
own cabinet minister pointed out to them seven years ago.
S1 (06:16):
Okay, so tell us, just how bad is the result then,
with regards to female Liberal MPs in Parliament now compared to, say, Labour?
S2 (06:23):
Well, although they had an internal review and recommendation ten
years ago recommending that they put up 50% of women
candidates for pre-select, 50% of women candidates for federal parliament.
They went to this latest election with only a third.
So it was already destined to fail. And of that third,
(06:47):
only a few were actually preselected for or had winnable
so-called winnable seats. And now, as the vote count is
coming in, it's still unfolding. We don't have the full results,
but it looks like there'll be 40 or so. Liberal
MPs in the House of those there. It's shaping up
(07:08):
that there will be maybe five women. Wow. Five out
of 40.
S1 (07:12):
And then in comparison, you've got, you know, Labour. All
seven newly minted Labour MPs in Queensland are women.
S2 (07:18):
Yes, it could be a bit of a clue there.
The other clue that the Liberal Party might pick up
is that in the last, in the last two elections,
excluding Saturdays, they lost seven Liberal heartland formerly Liberal heartland
seats to teal so-called teal independents. Every one of them
was a woman. Every one of them. Another little clue
there that the liberal heartland was electing women who cared
(07:43):
about guess what their number one priority was? Women. Number two,
climate change. Number three integrity. And the Liberal Party ignored,
just ignored all of these signs, their own internal recommendations
for year after year. And now we've reached the culmination point.
Or maybe, maybe it hasn't yet culminated. Maybe if they
(08:04):
fail to act on this problem, it could get worse.
They could become an extinct party like the Australian Democrats
or the Communist Party or the DLP. It's possible this
is how political change happens.
S1 (08:18):
Wow. That's incredible. And you know, you pointed out in
your column that Peter Dutton's campaign specifically was very male centric.
You know, he was constantly photographed driving trucks, pumping petrol
in cars, wearing hi vis. You know, it was sort
of like the fast and the furious, minus the muscles
and the bikini clad women.
S2 (08:34):
And it was furious without the fast.
S3 (08:36):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So was it really his policies.
S1 (08:39):
That did him in specifically.
S3 (08:41):
At this election?
S1 (08:41):
You know, as opposed to the optics, obviously weren't great
in terms of appealing to women, perhaps.
S2 (08:45):
Well, it was both. So it was the party organization
only putting up preselecting a third of their candidates as women.
It was the policy offering and the single most powerful
signal to women that the Liberal Party weren't interested in
them was the working from home policy, which the liberals
announced a bit over a month before the campaign proper
(09:07):
kicked in. And it was it was very deliberate. Jane
Hume launched it with a speech where she set up
the whole argument for it, in which, by the way,
there was no evidence that the policy was to require
all federal public servants based in Canberra to come to
the office five days a week. And it was a
great long speech she gave about it. The only evidence
(09:29):
was a one research paper from Stanford University in the
US talking about a different country in a different system,
not the Australian public service. And based on that, they
announced this policy. It sent a huge signal that the
party was anti-women, of course, because women have benefited so
much from working from home. And although the policy itself
(09:50):
only applied to the federal public service, it just sent
the signal that the Liberal Party is against working from home.
And if they're going to start with the federal public service,
where does it end? So that was a huge problem.
And then that just kept rolling through into the campaign
and the optics and the whole the whole whole disaster.
S1 (10:10):
And it's safe to say that women really did revolt.
I think I saw some research put out by Redbridge
which said that in February they polled people in 20
key marginal seats. The first wave found that Dutton had
a net approval rating of -11 among women, and then
by late April it was down to -28 among women.
And it wasn't nearly as bad among the men.
S2 (10:30):
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
S1 (10:31):
So they just really turned against him, I guess, in response. Okay.
S2 (10:35):
And so isn't it interesting that even in spite of that,
the debate this week about who to replace Peter Dutton
with two of the three leading names are men. I mean,
that would be crazy. We'll see what they do.
S1 (10:50):
Well, this is what I kind of wanted to ask
you about, because we know that five out of seven
leadership positions in the coalition are women, and I think
it's safe to say most of them were pretty much
invisible during the campaign. Like, do you reckon that's a
directive that came from Peter Dutton? What was that about?
S2 (11:02):
Well, Susan Lee, the deputy leader. She she was pretty visible,
but that's very much the exception, right.
S1 (11:10):
Yeah.
S2 (11:11):
The story. Yeah. And so she's because she was the
deputy leader. Yeah. She is now being talked about as
the only woman possibility to to lead the Liberal Party. Um,
they could do worse. They could do worse. But, um,
whoever is the first to take the leadership after this
devastating wipeout will have to be prepared to be sacrificed
(11:32):
on the altar of, um, of a party that's lost
its way. It's going to be full of angry recriminations.
So if whoever is anointed initially is unlikely to get
through to the next election. So if they put Susan
Lee up, she might not make it that far. But
we'll see.
S1 (11:50):
Okay, so why did all of this happen? I'm just
wondering because, you know, we know that the party had
its own internal review after the 2022 election, and it
revealed much of what we've already talked about. You know,
that the Liberal Party was failing to appeal to female
voters and that yes, it should pre-select women in 50%
of seats. So did they just ignore it?
S2 (12:09):
Yes they did.
S1 (12:10):
Why, though?
S2 (12:11):
They'd rather be comfortable with their existing boys club and
the factional system that has produced that. It's a lot.
A lot of the blame for this falls on the
factional system which reproduces more of its own right. It's
reproducing itself.
S1 (12:25):
Yes.
S2 (12:26):
They'd rather do that than succeed. They would rather become
extinct than change their behaviour to actively include women.
S1 (12:35):
Okay, now that would seem, on the face of it,
to be so irrational. It is. So why do you
have any insight into why? Why? I mean, I understand,
you know, human nature. We can all be a bit
resistant to change. It can be a bit painful. But
if you're constantly getting information that this is and, you know, obviously,
like you say, this has been a slow dying, I guess,
for the party. And they've been indicated for so long,
(12:56):
this is the problem. Why would you avoid it?
S2 (13:00):
It's a simple fact of people. Networks of allies and influence.
Seeking to reward itself and therefore reproduce itself. So it
requires a drastic intervention. And remember, the state divisions are
responsible for the Pre-selections and the state division, especially New
(13:24):
South Wales and Victoria, have been in a state of
total disarray. Factional war, you'll remember in New South Wales,
the Liberal Party state division couldn't even do the paperwork
to nominate candidates for local local government elections across the
entire state. There was not a single Liberal candidate for
any local council.
S1 (13:45):
Okay, so here's my question then. Because like you say,
there's been this very long term resistance to change. You know,
obviously people don't want to lose their power. Well, I
guess the question is, is gender quotas going to be
a real answer for them? Because we know that labor
introduced gender quotas some 30 years ago. So I guess
tell me a bit about what that process was like
for labor. And, you know, whether you think quotas or
what really might change the fortunes for the coalition, I guess.
S2 (14:08):
Well, there was a lot of resistance in the Labor
Party because the whole concept was seen as being anti merit.
We just do our pre-selections on merit. And but again,
it was the real argument was the factions just wanted
to continue doing what they'd always been doing and they
had to be forced to change their ways. And that's
(14:30):
what labor did. They imposed the quota and it's worked.
So at the last federal election, there were just under 50%
of the successful MPs that went into Parliament were for labor,
were women. And at this election, it's going to be
a little over. It looks like about 54% of the
labor caucus in the House this time is going to
(14:54):
be women. So it's really worked. Now, as you know, Samantha,
the liberal argument is we're not going to do that
because we're the party of freedom, of individual Dual responsibility
of merit and of choice. We're not going to put
a quota on ourselves. This is a pretext. This is nonsense,
because the coalition imposes a quota at the core of
(15:16):
its existence, which is with the National Party. They have
a rigid formula about how many nationals will be in
the frontbench in the cabinet of a coalition government. So
this is a this is a group of people who
work very happily and successfully. Well, let me rephrase that.
They work very happily with a quota at the core
(15:38):
of their organisation. So it's a straw man argument.
S4 (15:43):
So do you think there is.
S1 (15:44):
Fundamentally some sort of anti-woman attitude or belief system then
at work.
S2 (15:48):
I thought it was really revealing that the party, when
it was faced with a choice of leader between Julie
Bishop and Scott Morrison, chose Scott Morrison.
S1 (16:03):
And not only did they choose Scott Morrison. But in
the most humiliating of ways, I think Julie Bishop got
something like 11 votes in her favour or something. I mean,
it was it was horrible. Right.
S2 (16:13):
It was it's bizarre because she was by far the
most popular. Her approval rating among coalition MPs was head
and shoulders above any of the others. She had a
high profile. She was actually competent. Maybe that's why they
found her so threatening. So that was as the teal
(16:33):
independent from the West Australian seat of Curtin, which was
Julie Bishop's former seat. Kate Cheney has said that was
a sliding doors moment that showed her and many, many women,
that this was a party that was basically, as you've
just suggested, Samantha, it's at its core, is sexist. They
simply did not want a woman leader, and they got
(16:56):
Scott Morrison to get what you deserve.
S1 (17:00):
Never a dull moment with you, Peter Hartcher.
S2 (17:02):
Well, we've been given this rich fodder. Bye bye. The
electoral outcome to work with. And it's a it's a
remarkable one.
S1 (17:10):
Well, thank you so much as always, Peter, for your time.
S2 (17:13):
It's a pleasure, Samantha.
S1 (17:17):
Today's episode was produced by myself, Josh Towers and Julia Karkazis,
with technical assistance by Taylor Dent. Our executive producer is
Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To
listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow
the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to
(17:39):
support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe and
to stay up to date, sign up to our Morning
Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most
important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
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