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Liberal elder John Howard has cautioned against a new push for the embattled party to enact quotas for female representation, arguing there is no link between gender and electoral success.
Howard, the only Liberal leader to win consecutive elections over the past four decades, told SBS he still maintains an in-principle opposition to quotas.
“I don’t think I believe in quotas for anything. I just think you have to make judgements about individuals,” Howard said.
“One of the ironies of this debate about quotas is that the last state election in New South Wales, the biggest state population-wise, I think 42 per cent of the Liberal members of parliament elected at that election were women, yet we lost the election.”
“The point I’m making is that, in the end, the gender of the person may matter a lot less than people who run around talking about quotas realise.”
Howard, who governed from 1996 to 2007, maintained that the “most important thing” the party needed to do was strengthen its policy platform to “attract men and women”.
“The most important thing of all is to tell the public what you believe in and what you stand for. I think that’s fundamental,” he said.
When Howard left office in 2007, his 23-member cabinet included four women. Six years later, when the Liberals were re-elected with Tony Abbott as leader, just one woman, Julie Bishop, was among the 19 cabinet members.
The party — which when formed in the 1940s was deeply involved with women’s leagues — has struggled to keep female voters onside ever since.
Conservatives still divided over quotas
Debate around quotas quickly arose after the Coalition’s significant electoral defeat in early May under Peter Dutton’s leadership.
Many of those pushing for quotas come from the party’s NSW division, where the Liberal primary vote collapsed by 4 per cent and it lost the blue-ribbon seat of Bradfield.
The issue was understood to be on the agenda of Wednesday night’s state Liberal Women’s council meeting.
Following the electoral drubbing, Senator Maria Kovacic argued for the adoption of quotas as a temporary measure to address the party’s current make-up.
The party’s federal vice-president, Fiona Scott, agrees that quotas “could be a really important tool to force change”.
“But they need to be part of a wider suite of solutions that actively addresses the culture within the party, that shows we are a party of success and that women see they can contribute,” she told SBS.
“It includes gender, but it’s a whole range of issues where the party has been letting itself down and needs to get better,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
In 2016, the Liberal Party adopted a 50 per cent target for female representation, but according to an analysis from the Australia Institute, women only comprise 33 per cent of the current party room across both the House of Representatives and Senate.
Labor introduced quotas for women in 1994 and female parliamentarians now comprise 56 per cent of the ALP’s party room.
