On Monday, the former defence minister published a statement on her Facebook page declaring she would “not be nominating as a candidate for another term as a Liberal Senator for Western Australia.”

“For forty years I have proudly served my nation in the Army, in the Liberal Party, in defence industry, in Parliament and in Government,” she explained. “In my career after the Senate, I will continue to serve, but in new ways.”

Reynolds was elected to the Senate for Western Australia in 2014, and re-elected in 2016 and 2019. Prior to that, she’d spent more than a decade holding vice-president and treasury positions at various local WA Liberal Party divisions. 

Her first cabinet role came in mid-2019, serving under the Morrison government as Minister for Defence Industry. Over the next several years, she would serve in other portfolios, including Minister for Emergency Management, Minister for Government Services, Minister for Defence and Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. 

In her ‘Statement on Preselection’ published yesterday, Reynolds described her years serving in cabinet as “some of the most challenging times in our Nation’s recent history.”

She noted that being preselected and elected to the Senate was “a great honour and a privilege few Australians are afforded.”

“This is my tenth year in the Senate and my passion and commitment to my State and to my Nation remains as strong as ever.”

She went on to say it was “rare” for her to be in a position “to choose the time and circumstances of your departure,” and that her decision to leave politics was made “after considerable reflection of what is behind me and the opportunities that are now ahead of me.”

“Just as the health of our democracy can never be taken for granted, neither can the health of political parties – both must be constantly renewed and strengthened. I joined the Liberal Party over 35 years ago and my respect for, and belief in, the principles and values it was established on have only deepened over time.”

Addressing her party directly, she said that she “owe[s] the Liberal Party so much” and that she was “very grateful for the lifelong friendships I have made in the Party and for the overwhelming support I continue to receive from WA Liberal Party members and volunteers who have helped me over the last decade.”

In 2021, when she was Defence Minister, Reynolds faced intense scrutiny after former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins alleged she was sexually assaulted by then colleague Bruce Lehrmann in Reynolds’ ministerial office. Higgins was working as a media advisor to Senator Reynolds at the time. When she told Reynolds about the rape, Reynolds was horrified, according to Higgins, and asked her if she intended to go to the police.

“She said, ‘If you choose to go to the police we will support you in that process, but we just need to know ahead of time. We need to know now’,” Higgins told news.com.au.

Lehrmann has continued to deny the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the alleged rape of Higgins.

In 2021, Reynolds publicly apologised to Higgins for calling her “a lying cow” in February of that year and agreed to cover the legal costs.

“[I] did not mean it in the sense it may have been understood,” she wrote in a statement posted on her socials. “Given that the comment was made public, which I never intended, I also want to retract it and unreservedly apologise to Brittany Higgins and acknowledge the hurt and distress it caused to her.” 

Reynolds also promised to make a donation to a sexual assault charity as part of a confidential settlement with her. 

A criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann on one charge of sexual assault in 2022 was derailed in the ACT Supreme Court following juror misconduct. A second trial was aborted by prosecutors after concerns were raised for Higgins’ mental health.

In late 2022, lawyers for Higgins were reported to be preparing to bring a civil claim against Reynolds and former Attorney-General Michaelia Cash for sexual harassment, discrimination, disability discrimination, negligence and victimisation.

In December, Higgins reached a settlement with the Commonwealth, with “the parties [agreeing] that the terms of the settlement are confidential.” 

In January last year, Reynolds launched a defamation case against Higgins and her fiance, David Sharaz, over tweets her lawyers said caused damage that were “inaccurate and professionally damaging” and that “cannot be underestimated.”

Months later, Reynolds sent a defamation concerns notice to Tanya Plibersek following an interview on Sunrise where Plibersek claimed that the crime to which Higgins was subject to “had been inappropriately investigated, even covered up by her employers.”

Reynolds told Plibersek she could “make amends” and avoid legal action by issuing a signed apology, withdrawing her comments, paying Reynolds’ legal costs and providing an “appropriate sum to compensate my client for the damage caused by the publication” within 28 days.

Reynolds’ statement yesterday did not mention anything pertaining to Higgins or these cases. She did however insist that she would “keep working” with her party to “diversify and strengthen” it. 

“Having achieved more than I set out to when I entered the Senate, there is no perfect time to leave politics, but this is the right time for me and for the WA Liberal Party to provide my successor with the same opportunities it has given me,” she concluded. 

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Simon Birmingham applauded Reynolds’ “distinguished career” in both parliament and the military. 

“From her service in the Australian Army to her tenure as a Liberal Senator for Western Australia, Linda has been a steadfast champion for our nation’s defence, national security, and the advancement of Australia,” he said in a statement.

“Linda’s strength, courage and dignity have been remarked upon by many. I have no doubt that in the years ahead Linda will continue to unwaveringly serve her community and our nation.”

Liberal MP Melissa Price commented on Reynolds’ Facebook post, saying, “Thank you for your service to the party and Senate Linda, although I have no doubt that you will find other avenues to contribute to our great nation. My friend, you will be missed.”

Reynolds will remain in the Senate until her term ends in June 2025.

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Kovacic, the former president of the NSW Liberal Party, spoke about the challenges of the housing market for young people, as well as her commitment to improving outcomes for women. She is the co-founder of Western Sydney Women and prior to politics, she ran her own financial services business. She comes to the Senate filling a seat vacated by the late senator, Jim Molan.

Kovacic described the journey her parents took coming to Australia as migrants from Croatia, her own experience of becoming a mother of three by the age of 25, and later becoming a single mother who faced eviction from her rental home.

“I was alone, had no money and was soon to have no roof over my and my children’s heads. It was a turning point in my life,” she said. “As I sat on our front steps of that rental home clutching that notice I wept, but I promised myself and my children that I would never find myself in that situation again.”

Kovacic said politicians have a duty as leaders to explore “innovative policy solutions” in housing, balancing the aspiration of the next generation with the realities of the market. She spoke about increasing supply, as well as considering tax changes like capping the number of properties that can be negatively geared, replacing stamp duty, and correcting bracket creep. 

“A serious plan by this parliament has to deal with the housing crisis and would go a long way to restoring the electorate’s faith in political leadership solving big problems and delivering reform,” she said.

“I spent the better part of the last two decades working with people to help them buy their own homes, to realise the great Australian dream. This was my world before politics. I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it is for young Australians to buy their first home. Simply working hard does not appear to be enough anymore.

“Average property prices as a multiple of wages have more than doubled over the last 30 years. The task of saving for a deposit is even more challenging when rents are also on the rise. As a consequence, if you are under 40 you are less likely to own a home today than at any other time in the modern era. This has a financial and a human impact.

“Like my parents before me, I seized an opportunity in the most difficult of times. I worked hard. I worked long hours and on weekends, writing mortgages and small business loans all over Western Sydney, and I built a future for myself and my children. That is the transformative opportunity that small business provides.”

On the topic of gender equality, Kovacic spoke about the crisis of homelessness facing women over the age of 55, as well as the challenges facing working mothers and fathers, exorbitant child care fees, and a lack of support for women returning to work.

Kovacic also acknowledged the challenges facing women in politics – not mentioning the Liberal Party specfically – but talking more broadly about the Canberra environment.

“It is often felt that, while women were speaking up, Canberra was not listening, resulting in real frustration with politics. This is a longstanding problem that persists over multiple governments,” she said.

“I acknowledge the contributions of Charlotte Mortlock, Natalie Ward, Jacqui Munro, Sally Betts, Jane Buncle, Gisele Kapterian, Clare Batch, Rebecca Vonhoff and Alex Schuman for being the driving force that each of you are.”

In terms of her political philosophy, Kovacic said she was proud to be a “progressive Liberal”.

“At the heart of that liberalism is a belief in the inalienable rights of the individual’s personal and economic freedoms. I believe in the freedom of speech, religion and association. I believe in universal access to education and each person’s right to seek work and to start their own business,” she said.

“We must have the freedom to choose the way we live our own lives without fear of discrimination or exploitation; that every person must be treated equally before the law, irrespective of their gender, their culture, their religion, their sexuality, their wealth or their privilege. 

“I say to my new colleagues that we must be vigilant against threats to Australian liberalism from both right-wing populism and left-wing preoccupations with an equality of outcomes. Modern challenges are changing the role of government: national security threats, climate change, unbridled big tech, inflation and economic uncertainty all require government action because it is only as a collective that we can address these problems.”

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In a recent chat at Women for Election Australia’s October ‘In Conversation’ event, Nicolle opened up about some of the causes she is passionate about, like raising awareness and improving outcomes for those suffering with endometriosis, and bettering the treatment of all women in politics.

She also let us in on some of the very public challenges she’s faced along the way.

Nicolle has been open about her battle with stage four endometriosis and one of the things she’s most proud of is working with clinicians, patient advocate groups & and her parliamentary colleagues across party lines to launch the first-ever National Action Plan for Endometriosis. 

“In 2017, I heard the Labor Member for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann, giving a speech on endo. I literally chased her out of the Chamber down the hallway to say, ‘Excuse me, I’m Nicole, I’m brand-new, and we have to do something about this’,” she said.

“Gai and I formed the Parliamentary Friends of Endometriosis Awareness. And by the end of that year, we’d convinced our respective Health Ministers to take action.

“From the very beginning, Minister for Health Greg Hunt apologised on behalf of successive governments just for the pain and suffering that women have gone through unrecognised and unacknowledged for generations. And he also said that we would get a national action plan process, which was complete within a year.” 

“On the on the issue of stillbirth, my good friend, Senator Jim Molan, spoke about it in the party room. And I jumped up and said, this is a really important issue, and we’re not doing enough. Anyone who has gone through the tragedy of having a baby born still or someone within their family knows how utterly devastating it is for people. The fact that we lose over 2000 babies a year who were born still: that’s double the national road toll.

“We all know how to stay safe on the road, right? But women aren’t told the basics. And there are some really easy things you can do, from sleeping on your side to monitoring your baby’s movements.” 

“There are a lot of different ways that you end up working with people in Parliament. But there is a lot more we do on a bipartisan basis than you would ever know through the media, who don’t tend to report on the happy, cooperative stories.”  

Nicolle also spoke about the intimidating behaviour she faced during her 2019 re-election campaign, and what drove her to don a garbage bag (attracting international attention in the process), after a journalist devoted a significant portion of their column to criticising her appearance. 

“In the scheme of things I’ve been through, that was at the very lower end,” said Nicolle. “But I just got so angry, because it was the last of a long line of ways that I’ve been attacked as a woman.

“So I shot a video saying, ‘What am I supposed to do, wear a garbage bag?’ Like most professional women, you put so much time and energy into making sure you’re dressed appropriately, that you’re not going to offend anyone, that you’re not going to distract people. So that anyone can come and talk to me; and that I look professional, so that people realise I take my role seriously.

“I honestly thought in the year 2020 that we didn’t need to put up with this stuff anymore. I thought if I don’t call this out, then it will happen to other women. I was so grateful and encouraged to see former Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaking in interviews that she’s given around the release of her new book, saying she wished she had called out the commentary about her dress and appearance, because maybe it would have stopped another female member of Parliament being attacked.”

“It’s just unacceptable to judge women like that. I want to be judged on the work I do for my electorate, on the policies I’ve implemented during my time in Parliament. Judge me on what I do, not what I look like.” 

You can watch the full conversation between Nicolle Flint and Licia Heath here: 

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COVID-19 times have brought sober realisations about deep shifts in Australian society. Encroaching steadily over the past half-century, these have been largely submerged from daily view, until now.

Decades of cumulative attacks on the public sector have made privatisation and contracting out an unthinking government reflex. This includes areas the pandemic has revealed as highly unsuitable, including aged care and quarantine security.

Workplace deregulation has gone hand in hand with an enormous rise in casualisation. The pandemic has highlighted how many workers stitch together jobs at multiple workplaces to earn enough to survive, multiplying the chances of community COVID-19 transmission.

Denied the paid sick leave enjoyed by people in permanent jobs, casuals have to keep working, healthy or not. Precarity has turned out to be flexibility’s flipside, with unequivocally bad consequences for public health.

Women are more affected

The pandemic’s gendered impact has been especially stark. Under pressure, dynamics many people thought were in deep retreat visibly sprang back into action.

More likely to occupy low-paid, precarious jobs than men, women suffered first and disproportionately from pandemic job losses.

During lockdown, domestic violence — mostly committed by men against women — has spiked, and is even more difficult to escape than usual.

Women perform the vast share of lockdown-driven homeschooling, compounding their pre-pandemic burden of an unfairly large share of domestic labour generally.

The Morrison government provided free childcare early in the emergency, giving many families their first experience of relief from worry around this fraught aspect of family life. But it was snatched away again in the government’s first act of pandemic policy rollback. This doubly impacted on women as workers as well as parents, given the overwhelming bulk of childcare employees are female.

In contrast, many businesses received massive handouts with, it emerged later, highly variable flow-on to the workers the handouts were supposed to keep in their jobs. With little accountability attached to the government assistance, some employers were accused of outright rorting it. The contrast with tight accountability provisions attached to government welfare for individuals who need help is stark.

Further, the Morrison government’s positive job initiatives, such as they are, favour men, with job-creation plans focused on male-dominated industries.

Good morning, ma’am, is your husband home?

That this approach is based on, and reinforces, the idea of men as primary breadwinners is barely disguised. This is despite the fact women can be – and are in large numbers – primary breadwinners too and deserve the same opportunities.

Even the government’s tax cut bring-forward mooted for the October budget is heavily gendered: men are set to get more than twice the benefit women receive on average from the tax cuts, according to Australia Institute modelling.

One unequivocal boon of the pandemic has been the widespread, high-quality analysis and reporting of its gendered impacts.

Equally striking has been the expectation among many of these analyses’ authors that their findings would make the Morrison government change course, on the assumption that either the government did not realise its policies’ gendered impacts or because it would be shamed into adjusting them once these were revealed.

If you want to understand a government’s priorities, look at where it puts its money. The Morrison government is not just indifferent to the gendered impacts of COVID-19. The pattern of its pandemic policy decision-making suggests an active if not explicit “men first, women and children second” approach.

This is disappointing but not unexpected, given the male dominance of the Liberal and National parties’ federal parliamentary ranks: 73.2% of Morrison government MPs are men. Let that sink in for a moment. Only one in four federal Coalition MPs is a woman.

Around the Morrison government cabinet table the picture is the same: 73.9% of LNP cabinet ministers are men. There are just six women in the 23-person cabinet.

In the House of Representatives, from which the prime minister is drawn and where policy must initially be fought for and won to have the chance of being turned into law, 80% of Morrison government MPs are men.

Again, it is worth pausing to reflect on this: four out of every five lower house LNP politicians is a man.

A ‘men first’ approach to the pandemic

It is not such a surprise, then, that the government pursues “men first” policies.

While some – perhaps many – LNP women may support this stance, a reasonable assumption is that fairer shares of parliamentary LNP seats for women would redress this skewed approach at least somewhat.

Anyone supporting fair shares for men and women in life’s burdens and benefits would surely support fair shares for men and women in terms of parliamentary power.

The Australian Labor Party long ago faced up to and solved this problem with an initially controversial, now unremarked upon, preselection quota system for winnable seats.

Today men and women are almost equally represented in the federal Labor caucus: a bare majority (52.1%) of federal Labor MPs are men.

In contrast, the Liberal Party in 2016 adopted a ten-year plan without quotas to increase its female representation in federal parliament. It has visibly failed.

The problem has been compounded by the retirement from politics of senior female Liberal ministers like Julie Bishop and Kelly O’Dwyer at the 2019 election, as well as the loss of emerging talent such as businesswoman Julia Banks who resigned from the party in disgust at its sexist culture.

More than just numbers

Longtime activist for women in politics, Ruth McGowan, says the extra pressures arising from the pandemic could well discourage women who might otherwise have considered a run from doing so. Women’s burgeoning domestic labour burden during the pandemic is likely to literally keep women in the home and away from the House of Representatives, McGowan suggests. To the extent this could further depress women’s share of Coalition seats in parliament, this is very bad news.

A senior cabinet member, Environment Minister Sussan Ley, last year called on the Liberal Party to introduce quotas for women. Her cabinet colleague, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, said “all options [should be] on the table”, adding she was as yet undecided about quotas. Others, such as Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume, support a “Liberal alternative” to quotas to address the party’s skewed representation.

The gendered nature and impact of the Morrison government’s pandemic policy responses makes the domination of men within the coalition cabinet and party room a matter of national significance.

The Liberal and National parties’ preselection processes are broken and need fixing. The fact that only one in four coalition MPs in the Morrison government’s cabinet and party room is a woman is proof.

Until the structural sexism within the Liberal and National parties’ ranks is fixed, the Coalition’s “men first” policies will likely continue.

Women and children need the Morrison government’s “senior six” female cabinet ministers to person up and get their parties to adopt quotas for women in winnable Liberal and National party seats. It’s the only thing proven to work and it’s way past time the problem was fixed.

Chris Wallace, Associate Professor, 50/50 By 2030 Foundation, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Before leaving her political life behind, she released a scathing statement on Twitter on Wednesday, calling out the “tribalism and toxic culture” in the Liberal party and politics.

“Sadly, the tribalism and toxic culture continued. The reprisals and retribution, whispering campaigns, personal attacks and name calling, social media rants, messages and emails from the puerile to the offensive and defamatory allegations and lies were unrelenting.”

Statement – Julia Banks pic.twitter.com/pCvNN2ZoQt

— Julia Banks MP (@juliabanksmp) May 22, 2019

Banks’ high profile departure from the Liberal party in November last year after the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull, sent shockwaves through the parliament. She declared at the time she will not tolerate “bullying and intimidation”.

She later elaborated on the reality of her experience in Canberra, saying she witnessed “an entrenched culture of anti-women behaviour” and that politics became a “house of horrors” for her.

In her twitter statement, she wrote it had been an honour to serve “under the authentic and inspiring leadership of former Primer Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former Deputy Leader Julie Bishop”.

“My hope is that the right wing conservative faction don’t continue to drown out addressing the climate change emergency nor the Australian ethos of equality for all and humanitarian spirit,” Banks continued.

“To those in the Liberal Party including current and former Members of Parliament who engaged in this behaviour, I say this: You don’t own me – you never did. And I don’t “owe a debt to you”. It’s a free country for people to run for office and to advocate for what they believe in.”

“To the haters generally whose disturbing behaviour adds to the toxic political culture, I say this: Stop.”

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Fortunately, this was a skill I had mastered during my 12 years on Macquarie Street. I have no doubt people see the name-calling and mud-slinging that takes place in the chamber and think politics is rife with bullying. What they don’t know is that it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I would say it reached a pinnacle when a member of the Opposition yelled at me to ‘get yourself a facelift!’ one day when I was speaking.  A childish insult unbecoming of a person entrusted by their constituents to represent them in the parliament – but at least made publicly so that when I called him out on it there were consequences. It’s what goes on outside of the public eye that really cuts you to the core.

I remember one particularly vicious press conference where I was attacked on all fronts, with behaviour bordering on verbal abuse.  The experience drove my press secretary to tears and left me shaken and with a sense of disbelief that grown, professional adults could resort to behaviour reminiscent of a schoolyard mob.

I later found out from a friendly journalist that the other journalists had been plotting in the common room to make me cry so that they could report in the news that I wasn’t coping with the leadership. Needless to say they weren’t happy that I’d kept it together.  I once again thanked my mother for her sound advice.

The power of a bully lies in their ability to provoke a reaction and undermine a person’s confidence so they can tell a story that you’re not up to the task.  Whilst most of us can cope fairly well with being at the end of a sharp comment or insult, persistent abuse over time can break even the most confident person.  If the jibes are coming from a group of people, this only amplifies the affect.

We all have a part to play in cultivating accepting and supportive workplaces and from time-to-time, this might mean calling out bullying behaviour even if you are not its primary victim.  Sometimes we need to speak on behalf of others, particularly when they are feeling disempowered and finding it hard to voice it themselves.

Let’s not forget that the impact of bullying in the workplace can permeate far beyond the effect on the victims themselves.  Enabling this behaviour, or some cases even encouraging it to flourish, can create a toxic culture where support for talent and ambition is quickly replaced with blame and disdain.

Bullying is designed to cut people down, so it’s no wonder people find it difficult to speak up when it is happening to them. One of my biggest failings as party leader was that I didn’t feel as if I could admit to anyone that I was feeling overwhelmed. I felt that I couldn’t talk to any of my colleagues because they would have taken it as a sign of weakness. I was the first female to lead a major political party in New South Wales and there was no one around at the time in a similar position to me. I didn’t know where to turn.

Looking back, things might have been different if I had admitted to someone that I wasn’t coping and asked for advice.  Seeking help is a sign of strength – it takes a great deal of courage, particularly if you’re in a leadership role, to admit that you are struggling.

If you’re facing adversity you’ve got to be brave. After that press conference where the journos tried to make me cry, I woke up to the headline ‘Dead Woman Walking’. Yes that hurt and yes, it was hard to walk out the door that day, and walk into work with a smile on my face.  But I did it – and it wasn’t a false smile.  It was a thousand wattage Chika special grounded in the fact that I believed what I was doing was worthwhile.

No matter what the critics are saying always believe in yourself.

There may be merit in their criticism and by all means take that on board and work to improve – we can always strive to do better. But if it’s not valid, ignore it. That ‘Dead woman walking’ headline? The paper went straight to the bin, where I am pretty sure the dog peed on it.

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The Coalition will be returned for a third straight term, but it is still unclear whether Berejiklian will be forced to form a minority government. Seven seats remain unconfirmed on Saturday night, with the government needing to pick up four to maintain a majority.

Gladys Berejiklian becomes the first woman to win a NSW election as leader. Speaking now on @abcnews

— Annabel Crabb (@annabelcrabb) March 23, 2019

NSW Labor, led by Michael Daley had a disastrous result, failing to pick up a single seat from the government. Daley’s campaign was plagued when footage emerged last week of him suggesting that young people were being forced to “flee” Sydney because their jobs were being taken by educated Asians.

Despite this, Daley declared he was proud of his and his team’s efforts and intended to remain leader.

Morris Iemma says he’s never seen a worse final week in an election campaign than the one Michael Daley just had #nswvotes

— Bevan Shields (@BevanShields) March 23, 2019

During her victory speech, Berejiklian said she was “incredibly proud of the wonderful place in which we live.”

She noted the possibility of a minority government, but assured the electorate she’d make it work. “Whether or not my government is a majority or minority government, we will work closely with the three minority parties in the New South Wales government which is so important for NSW,” she said.

“For the first time in nearly half a century the people of NSW have seen fit to give us a third term in government.”

She added that the Liberal Party had not conceded a single seat to Labor and that in some seats there’d even been a “swing to the government.”

Before thanking her mum, dad and sisters. Berejiklian highlighted the significance of her win and her gratitude in NSW for being a state willing to elect a woman from a migrant background as Premier.

In her victory speech, Gladys Berejiklian says NSW is a state where someone “with a long surname and a woman” can be elected premier. #NSWDecides

— Josephine Tovey (@Jo_Tovey) March 23, 2019

“What is most important to me is that, no matter what your background – where you live, what your circumstances – everybody in this state has the chance to be their best.

“A state in which someone with a long surname – and a woman – can be the premier of NSW.”

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When asked about his view on quotas John Howard’s former chief-of-staff Grahame Morris offered this, rather unedifying, response.

“I’m not one of those people who is a great believer in ‘hey it’s time for a woman’ because then you get a woman who is there just to make up numbers. Look at some of the dregs behind Bill Shorten who are just there to make up the numbers.”

It takes just 13 seconds to see what the Liberal Party really thinks about women in politics #auspol pic.twitter.com/L9scPSfRB0

— Shorten Suite (@Shorten_Suite) September 11, 2018

Dregs. He actually described a cohort of female politicians as dregs.

To Morris’s credit he did offer an unreserved apology afterwards in which he specifically recognised that his language was wrong and could deter other women from politics.

John Howard's former chief of staff, Grahame Morris: To @billshortenmp and the women behind him I say sorry.

MORE: https://t.co/ykweMevBOK #Speers #auspol pic.twitter.com/jLi1rb1OWo

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) September 11, 2018

Notwithstanding his apology it’s hard to dismiss the bitter aftertaste his comments leave. If they were made by a representative of a party in which women were well represented it would, perhaps, be easier to brush off as offensive but inconsequential, but that’s not the case.

To the contrary they were made by a man from a party in which women are chronically underrepresented. A situation it is difficult to imagine being rectified anytime soon.

The fact Senator Eric Abetz ran a similar argument, using Labor women as a reason not to embrace quotas, suggests the disrespect for female politicians inherent in Morris’s comments may not have been a unique slip of the tongue.

Eric Abetz is against quotas for women in the Liberal Party. "Look at the Labor Party side of the parliament and you can see what quotas do and it aint a good look." #auspol #politas pic.twitter.com/Q5Wj8fwPEI

— David Marler (@Qldaah) September 11, 2018

There are currently only 13 Liberal women in the House of Representatives compared to 62 men and given women disproportionately hold marginal seats, that number is expected to shrink at the next election.

The representation of women in the Liberal party in federal parliament is currently less than 25% which is particularly dismal when you consider Labor’s representation of women sits at 48%.

So what’s the difference? Are Labor women just more ‘meritorious‘ than Liberal women? Or could it be that quotas – which Labor have had for several decades – have evened the field?

On Sunday Treasurer Josh Frydenberg suggested that quotas weren’t necessary for the party to reach its 50:50 target by 2025. His optimism is laudable but it’s impossible to fathom how the party will get anywhere near that figure without a mechanism to achieve it.

On Tuesday Liberal MP Craig Laundy became the first male voice in the discussion to say the Liberal party needs to consider quotas.

Exclusive by @vanOnselenP | Former minister and close Malcolm Turnbull confidant Craig Laundy is the first male Liberal member of parliament to come out in support of gender quotas to address the party’s low number of female representatives https://t.co/iI1IzlyYIR #auspol

— The Australian (@australian) September 10, 2018

“We need to change this and perhaps a first step is short-term intervention with a quota system in safe seats and selected safe Senate spots so the party can grow its female representation to the 50/50 level,” Laundy told The Australian.

It’s not an argument that Prime Minister Scott Morrison agrees with as he explained to  Leigh Sales on ABC’s 730 program on Tuesday night.

“I believe in any political organisation it should be a matter of one’s own credibility, exertion, work and merit,” Morrison said.

He’s focusing on ensuring the obstacles that are preventing more women from moving forward are removed.

“I don’t think quotas are a way of removing obstacles,” he said.

Rather he favours a more ‘practical’ approach like training programs and support to help women get to a position where they win preselections and then ‘understand what’s expected of them’ once they reach parliament.

How do the women of Australia feel about have it “PM-splained” to them that we just need more training so we can “better understand what is expected of us”?

— Kristine Ziwica (@KZiwica) September 11, 2018

Morrison cited the record intake of women in the Liberal party in 1996 under John Howard as an example of how this works. It is true that did happen but the fact that two decades on the Liberal party has leaked women to the point we’re now at, makes it far less compelling.

https://twitter.com/GrogsGamut/status/1039450153118134272

Without quotas it’s impossible to see how the representation of women in the Liberal party will change and despite a growing number of voices making that argument it’s impossible to see that happening. Perhaps an electoral wipe out is the only thing that will trigger change.

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Banks, a supporter of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, said she would not endure the “bullying or intimidation” tactics of her party.

“The people of Chisholm know that I say what I think. They know that I will always call out bad behaviour and will not tolerate any form of bullying or intimidation,” she said.

“I have experienced this both from within my own party and from the Labor Party.

“In anticipating my critics saying I’m ‘playing the gender card’ — I say this. Women have suffered in silence for too long.”

It’s an opinion shared by others in the Liberal Party.

Speaking on Four Corners this week, former Small and Family Business Minister Craig Laundy said at least three female politicians had expressed anguish over bullying tactics employed by those calling for the spill.

“I’ve had three females — one senator and two members of the House — complain to me that they felt stood over in trying to sign a letter which had been asked for by the Prime Minister,” Mr Laundy said.

“And, you know, that’s clearly not acceptable. Those three women didn’t sign the letter, but the term they used was: ‘We were stood over.’”

Indeed, the former PM himself agreed that this was the case describing his ousting as a “deliberate insurgency”, instigated by party members– Dutton and Abbott– as well as some members of the media who “chose to deliberately attack the government from within.”

Earlier in the year, Liberal Senators Jane Hume and Linda Reynolds also told the ABC that the Liberal Party inarguably had a problem with its representation of women but it remained a “tough thing” convincing members to act.

“If we told you that there wasn’t a bit of a collective eye roll when we start talking about this, we’d be lying,” Senator Hume said.

“One of the tough things we have to do is convince our members and our colleagues that there is a business case for increasing the number of women in parliament.”

But following these statements and Julia Banks’ emphatic resignation, some Liberal MPs have sought to quash the criticism altogether– refuting the idea that the LNP has a problem with women.

Former Liberal Senator Helen Kroger, who now chairs the party’s women’s committee, told ABC Radio’s RN Breakfast program that while last week’s leadership spill was a “unique” and “difficult” event, the party did not have an entrenched culture of bullying.

“It is a rough and tough game, politics. There is no two ways about it. It is an environment which is not for everyone,” she said.

“I feel deeply for Julia Banks, and clearly she was very upset with the week that she experienced … but politics is a career not for everyone — that’s the bottom line.”

Victorian Liberal President Michael Kroger, dismissed the claims as “scuttlebutt, innuendo, rumour” and said “99 per cent of it is all rubbish”.

Backbench MP Craig Kelly also suggested that Banks was overreacting to typical, every day political conduct .“I mediate that you’ve purchased to roll with the punches in this sport,” Kelly told Sky News.“We’re political parties. It’s a tough-and-tumble sport.”

The subtext of this narrative from the Liberal Party is glaringly obvious, it’s almost funny. Politics is a “rough, tough, sport”  that women are not cut out for. Julia Banks wasn’t bullied, she was weak.

But let’s be clear: This is not remotely close to the truth.

Politics isn’t an easy career path. It requires a huge amount of resilience, tenacity and grit. All of which, Julia Banks has in spades. What she also has–which some of her colleagues seem to be missing altogether–is conviction.

A party which perpetually struggles to attract women to its ranks is also unable to keep the few it has in Parliament. Is that not worth some analysis?

Nine’s political editor Chris Uhlman summed it up perfectly this week. “Perhaps some of the men who so crave power in here should get their heads around this: You can’t win elections if you alienate half of the voting population.”

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Politics isn’t rational. Prejudice trumps performance. Politics is run by thugs. These are three reasonable conclusions from the snubbing of electorally popular Julie Bishop in last week’s Liberal leadership ballot, and Bishop-ally Julia Banks’ decision not to stand at the next election to protest bullying during the leadership campaign.

Why did it happen? Does politics have to work this way?

There are four facets to why Bishop, far away the most likely to maximise the Liberal vote at the next federal election, is not now prime minister.

Firstly, there is not so much a “woman problem” as a “man problem” on the conservative side of politics in Australia. The Liberal Party room is dominated – and increasingly so over the past generation – by male MPs who anoint leaders in their own image.
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Read: ‘I don’t tolerate bullying and intimidation’: Liberal MP Julia Banks to leave politics

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Last week they looked at Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison and Bishop and chose the one who is, if you average out the demographics of current Liberal MPs, their identikit picture. This reinforces the collective power of men in the Liberal party room, maximises their comfort level and is, until exposed to political reality in the form of a general election, an approach easily sold on the inside as “common sense”.

Secondly, the reluctance of Liberal women to name and organise around the liberal feminism they actually practice, psychologically undercuts their power and keeps them in a prone position.

They need to name and unashamedly organise around the set of ideas that can end the present male Liberal monoculture in a way consistent with their political philosophy: that is, liberal feminism. Every time Bishop and those like her shy from declaring themselves liberal feminists, they pull the rug from under not only under their own feet, but also from under the feet of every other Liberal woman around them. It’s time they staked out their philosophical ground.

Thirdly, Liberal women have to stake out their organisational ground too. They have yet to apply obvious lessons from overseas examples of how to organise and achieve change. As a British Conservative Party opposition frontbencher in 2005, the now British prime minister Theresa May established “Women2Win” to get more Tory women into parliament: the number of female Conservative Party MPs in Britain has since nearly quadrupled. Where is the Australian equivalent? Only Liberal women can make it happen.

Michael Kroger says he’s spoken to one female MP and from that conversation he’s confident in saying no-one was bullied and even if they were that’s what happens in politics.

— rob harris (@rharris334) August 29, 2018

And fourthly, in Australia, because of its particularly brutal gender politics, quotas have to be part of the answer. The long-held, empirically unarguable view of experts like ANU political scientist Marian Sawer is that the Liberals’ refusal to adopt Labor-style minimum quotas for women’s pre-selection in winnable seats is dragging women’s parliamentary representation here backwards.

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Read: Julie Bishop deserved so much more from the party she served loyally for decades

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Australia has moved from 15th place in the world in terms of women’s overall parliamentary representation in 1999 to 50th place in 2018 – an astonishing regression entirely down to the fall in female conservative MPs. Liberal women should accept the findings of sustained research in this area and make quotas central to their bargaining agenda.

Globally, the most successful conservative politician of the 21st century, by a very long margin, is a woman: German Chancellor Angela Merkel. If you want to see someone dispatch a thug, watch Merkel deal with US President Donald Trump. The British Conservative Party has already had two women prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. There won’t be a female Liberal prime minister here until Liberal women themselves organise with moderate allies to boost their numbers and normalise their presence in the party room.

Nor is this just an internal Liberal Party problem. It’s in the interests of all Australian voters for the Liberals’ “man problem” to be fixed since the consequences of being hostage to it, as we are now seeing, are so bad.

Like a river dying from lack of water, increased party political involvement overall has to underpin change like this. More “occasional politicians”, as Max Weber described them, are needed and fewer political apparatchiks. More doing your civic duty by joining a political party and voting in preselections rather than leaving these crucial choices to the sad, mad and self-seeking. It means reasonable people not folding and leaving in the face of pressure from the thugs, but rather binding together and seeing the thugs off.

Politics can, and has been, more rational. Prejudice doesn’t have to, and hasn’t always, trumped performance. Politics doesn’t have to be run by thugs.

When the histories are written, the Liberal “moderates” appeasement of the party’s thuggish right-wing, both in policy and personnel, will be revealed as central to former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall and the party room’s failure to elect Bishop his successor.

Early this year, the numbers were there for moderate NSW Liberals to defeat the preselections of key right-wingers Tony Abbott in Warringah, Craig Kelly in Hughes and Angus Taylor in Hume. Internal discussions occurred over whether to do so. Turnbull and every key moderate squibbed the chance.

You can’t beat thugs through appeasement. You’ve got to get rid of them. Cleaning up the Liberals right-wing is the challenge for a future leader – a real leader.

Chris Wallace, ARC DECRA Fellow, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Especially coming just hours after his party lost its most high profile woman and deputy leader of 11 years, with Julie Bishop announcing she was heading for the backbench,

The problem of course is that there’s just not enough women in the Government in the first place — and given recent preselection processes, that appears unlikely to drastically change in the future. It could actually get worse.

The problem also is that the Liberal Party internally has a serious issue with appointing female leaders. What else can you conclude from the fact Julie Bishop — with vastly more experience, respect and popularity amongst the Australian public than her two opponents in Friday’s leadership spill — received just 11 votes when she took on Morrison and Peter Dutton?

All of this is going to be, and should be, painful for Morrison, who has already suffered a massive Newspoll defeat on Sunday, losing five points to Labor, which is now getting 56 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, compared to the LNP’s 44 per cent. Bill Shorten is now the country’s preferred prime minister, at 39 per cent, compared to Morrison’s 33 per cent.

Makes you wonder if some in the party are questioning if they should have just gone with Bishop during the leadership spill after all.

Meanwhile, Morrison’s first speech as Prime Minister on Friday failed to mention anything on women’s safety, and the rate of women being murdered at the hands of a current or former partner in Australia. That was especially disappointing given the Liberal Party’s own self-imposed chaos, destruction and distraction last resulting in debate over an important amendment to family law being put off — at least another two weeks.

Still, Morrison is calling his new team a  ‘Next Gen’ one, despite it looking much like a slightly adapted version of the previous one. His six women in Cabinet extend to 11 women in the full ministry — out of a total 40. One more than Turnbull’s full ministry but one that still sees men dominating four to one.

Let’s remember that one of those men who stays in the ministry — who stays in the Cabinet no less — is Peter Dutton (although his responsibilities are somewhat diminished with Immigration removed from his mega Home Affairs portfolio). And while the Liberal Party’s wrecker-in-chief Tony Abbott is out of the inner circle for now, that may not necessarily be for long.

The key appointments for women in Morrison’s team include Senator Marise Payne moving from Defence Minister to Foreign Affairs Minister. She certainly is the most experienced person for the role, having already spent time internationally with key leaders in her time in Defence, and serving more than 20 years as a senator.

Melissa Price moves from the outer  moves from the outer ministry to Environment Minister in the new team — after Morrison split energy and environment into two portfolios. She’ll have a difficult role ahead, given she’s directly responsible for emissions reduction in a government that shows little interest in addressing climate change. Price has extensive experience in mining, which has raised some concerns.

Meanwhile, Kelly O’Dwyer has seen her responsibilities expand, taking on the Industrial Relations portfolio which returns to Cabinet. She retains the role of Minister for Women.

Bridgete McKenzie also takes on an expended role in Cabinet, leading on Regional Services, Sport, Local Government and Decentralisation.

Michaelia Cash has been appointed Minister for Small & Family Business, Skills & Vocational Education

Karen Andrews takes on the Industry, Science and Technology portfolio in Cabinet. She was previously an assistant minister.

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