From what we’ve seen in the media, you would think the majority of taxpayers are unhappy with the changes and even more unhappy with Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. But a survey of 1245 voters between January 31 and February 3 by Newspoll tells us otherwise.

While just 38 per cent of survey respondents said they would benefit from Albanese’s revised tax cut plan, 62 per cent of voters said the Prime Minister made the right choice to amend the Stage 3 tax cuts plan.

So, what does this data mean? 

Backflip or boost?

It is true that Anthony Albanese changed the government’s position on the Stage 3 tax cuts, a plan which was legislated by the Morrison government in 2019 and due to come into effect in July this year.

It was one of Albanese’s election promises to follow through with the legislated tax cut plan, until he announced earlier this year that the Labor government would be revising the plan to “boost the family budgets of middle Australia”.

Coalition parliamentarians, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton leading the charge, used this announcement as a chance to attack Albanese and the Labor government for “lying” to taxpayers, backflipping and breaking an election promise. 

While that might be true, however hyperbolised, Albanese appeared at the National Press Club of Australia two weeks ago to explain to voters how the changes to the Stage 3 tax cuts might benefit them.

“These tax cuts will provide meaningful help for parents returning to work, particularly women with young children,” Albanese said in his speech. 

“Because one of the things that we know is that when women with children are making decisions about how many hours an increase in their take home pay is a powerful incentive.”

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Albanese has not shied away from media scrutiny. On Sunday, the Prime Minister spoke with David Speers on ABC’s Insiders, backing the call despite hard questioning.

“Circumstances have changed,” Albanese said in his defence of the tax cut revision, “and what we’ve done is respond to the changes to the economic circumstances.

“I’ve gone to the National Press Club and said, ‘we’ve changed our position’. Why have we done that? Because we’ve listened to people.”

Albanese’s clear communication – in the media, at the Press Club, on social media platforms – has clearly not gone unnoticed. Perhaps voters have seen through the negative messaging from the Opposition and understand that this reform could actually be a good thing.

You’ll get a tax cut on July 1, whether you’re a teacher, a nurse, a cleaner, an engineer, or a truck driver. pic.twitter.com/Ke6b1PBS9Z

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 4, 2024

Other changes

It’s not the first time a Prime Minister has changed their position on a policy. In the early weeks of her leadership in July 2010, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared she would not be introducing a tax on carbon in Australia.

Just months later in early 2011, Gillard unveiled a carbon tax plan.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the decision was a “historic betrayal” and hinged much of his leadership on negativity and opposition of the Labor Party, as well as Gillard’s broken promise.

Again, it’s not the first time a Coalition leader’s foundation is based on negative messaging. We see much of that now with opposition leader Peter Dutton and his outspoken, divisive discourse on issues such as the Voice to Parliament, Australia Day and now the Stage 3 tax cuts.

However, as the Prime Minister said on ABC’s Insiders, Albanese has been “honest” and “upfront” about the position change on the tax cuts. And perhaps that has made all the difference.

Can we forgive him?

Teal independent Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender’s speech at the National Press Club, one week after Albanese’s, also backs up what the Newspoll data suggests. As the MP for Australia’s wealthiest electorate, Spender put the call out to hear from her constituents on how they feel about Albanese’s announcement to revise the tax cut plan.

Spender said the Wentworth electorate is split on the call – but on the whole, “most people are saying this is a good thing”, despite having the “biggest proportion of people who are going to lose out”.

“There’s actually a really significant group of people who would have benefited, who are also saying, you know what, we want to help other people. This is a really hard time right now,” she told the Press Club.

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There is some truth to the messaging of the Coalition beyond the negative, damning attacks on the Labor party. As Spender rightly pointed out, a lot of high income earners were banking on the original Stage 3 tax cuts plan and feel “completely let down” by the changes.

But I think what Spender’s speech and the Newspoll data tells us, is that the majority of people know that there are others doing it tougher, and it’s those people who will benefit from the changes the most.

So maybe Albo’s “broken promise” isn’t such a bad thing. If Newspoll’s data is right, people care about those who are most affected by cost of living. Humanity wins, negativity loses, and maybe this time we can forgive Albanese for a broken promise.

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The investigation, undertaken by Nine’s Nick McKenzie, Michael Bachelard and Amelia Ballinger, has exposed a suite of messages that Pezzullo reportedly sent to Liberal Party powerbroker Scott Briggs where he tried to “undermine political and public service enemies” and “promote the careers of conservative politicians he considered allies”.

According to Nine, the messages also show that Pezzullo “bad-mouthed” moderate Liberals including Julie Bishop and Marise Payne, and worked to stifle the press.

That Pezzullo so brazenly politicised his role is problematic because public servants are required to be apolitical, independent, open and accountable, according to the Public Service Code of Conduct. There is no suggestion that any of the content in the messages were corrupt or illegal, rather inappropriate for a public servant.

As Senator Nick McKim told ABC radio this morning, Pezzullo had failed to be open and accountable in his public service role.

“Mr Pezzullo has failed both of those tests, and his position really now as secretary of the Home Affairs department is completely untenable and if he’s not working on his resignation letter to Prime Minister Albanese he certainly should be,” McKim said.

Among the messages exposed by Nine, Pezzullo reportedly wrote to Briggs that then cabinet minister Marise Payne was “completely ineffectual”, writing “Marise is a problem!” Briggs replied that then Prime Minister Malcom Turnbill “thinks so too” but that it would be too hard for him to “dump a woman” from cabinet.

Pezzullo reportedly mocked former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop when she appeared in a fashion shoot with media personality Kerri-Anne Kennerley, and said Labor’s Kristina Keneally looked “unhinged” during the 2017 Bennelong byelection. 

“Sorry. She has agency and autonomy. I get it. But how does this advance the cause of strong, independent policy or business relevant women?’’ he wrote, referring to Bishop.

In the week that Morrison won the Liberal Party leadership from Malcolm Turnbull, Pezzulllo sent a message to Briggs that said a “right-winger” should be made Minister of Home Affairs, the department that Pezzullo overlooked.  “You need a right winger in there – people smugglers will be watching … please feed that in,” his message reportedly said.

According to Nine, Pezzullo and Briggs also discussed Morrison’s ascension to the Liberal Party leadership and Pezzullo also raised the topic of Tony Abbott making a return to politics. 

 In a statement on Monday morning, Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil said she had referreed Pezzullo to the Australian Public Service Commissioner in the wake of Nine‘s investigation.

Pezzullo is a former deputy chief of staff to Labor leader Kim Beazley, and has held the role of Secretary of Home Affairs since the department was created in 2017.

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It comes as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced a reshuffle to the Coalition frontbench on Tuesday morning, which has seen Senator Michaelia Cash promoted to the role of Shadow Attorney-General.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has also been named Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, while Senator Kerrynne Liddle has been given the role of Shadow Minister for Child Protection.

James Patterson has been named Shadow Home Affairs Minister.

The reshuffle follows the resignation of Julian Leeser from the position of Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians and Shadow Attorney-General. He moved to the backbench after Dutton decided the Liberal Party would formally oppose the Voice to Parliament. Leeser has been a long-time supporter of constitutional recognition for Indigenous people.

The promotion of Senator Price will allow her to play a key role in the Coalition’s campaign against the Voice to Parliament. She has already been vocal in her opposition to the Voice.

The resignation of Karen Andrews from the shadow frontbench is a blow to the Liberal Party, and her exit at the next election will further diminish the presence of experienced women in the party. In a statement, Andrews said she was proud to have been the first female Queensland MP to serve in a cabinet role. 

“After much deliberation, I have decided not to recontest the seat of McPherson at the next election, and as a result I have asked Peter Dutton not to include me in his new shadow ministry,” she said in the statement.

“Having made the decision to call time on my political career, I wanted to ensure the Coalition has maximum time to have a replacement in the crucial home affairs portfolio, and the best local candidate for McPherson in place.

“It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve this nation as Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, and as Minister for Industry, Science and Technology under a Coalition Government, and on the shadow front bench as Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence.”

On her departure, Dutton said: “Karen made a decision that she wasn’t going to contest the next election. She said to me at the time of the next reshuffle she would be happy to stand aside.

“She’s, I think, as an engineer, when you look at her background, her experience over her period in government and now in Opposition, she will look forward to the next successful stage of her life.

“I think sometimes we underestimate with the travel and scrutiny and everything else involved in this business, you know, it can take a toll and that’s the case for all of us.

“But for Karen, to leave at a time of her choosing and in those circumstances I think speaks to her skill set and the way she’s been a significant contributor, not just in the home affairs portfolio when we were in government, but in Opposition when you don’t have the resources of a department.”

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It’s been reported that the incident occurred when the group barrelled their way towards one of the exits of the House of Representatives as the lower house had been voting on a government bill on income-management policies. 

Speaker of the House Milton Dick said he’d ordered the doors to be locked according to procedure during a parliamentary vote, but that some Opposition MPs decided to force their way through the doors anyways.

A female House attendant trying to close the doors had her arm injured in the scuffle. 

“The most serious aspect of this incident is that members physically pushed their way past the attendant to get out of the chamber, resulting in them getting hit in the doorframe and hurting their arm,” said the Speaker, adding that he is “particularly disgusted by this behaviour” and “will not tolerate it”. 

Speaker of the House Dick said he’d received a written report about this incident, and on Wednesday morning, each of the Coalition MPs involved in the attendant’s injury stood to issue an apology after being read the riot act. 

Members of this reprimanded group were Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor, Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie, Shadow Immigration Minister Dan Tehan, Shadow Climate Change and Energy Minister Ted O’Brien, former deputy Speaker Llew O’Brien, and backbenchers Zoe McKenzie and Sam Birrell.

Amongst the apologies, Andrew Hastie said, “I particularly regret any issues with the staff member involved, and I apologise to her unreservedly.”

Former deputy speaker Llew O’Brien also said, “Our staff here in the chamber do an incredible job — and one of them is not crowd control — and I apologise to them for that.”

In having the Liberal MPs apologise, the Speaker said he’s committed to making the building and chamber “safe and respectful places of work for all”.

“For a staff member of this place to be treated in this way, when they are simply doing their job, is disrespectful and a very serious matter.”

“We all know that members are busy, however I’m sure we would all agree that no member’s time is worth more than a staff member’s safety.”

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The Australia Institute conducted an evening poll on the night of the federal election on May 21 and a subsequent poll in June, that shows less women than men voted for the Coalition, and women’s support continued to drop in the weeks after the election.

There was a 7 percentage point gap between male and female Coalition voters at the federal election, with 37 per cent of men voting for the Coalition, compared to 30 per cent of women.

Three weeks after the federal election, just 28 per cent of women said they would vote for the Coalition, compared to 38 per cent of male voters.

Australians also viewed the “treatment of women” as one of the biggest weaknesses for the Coalition at the election, second only the “state of aged care”.

A massive two in three Australians indicated that the treatment of women in politics was a weakness for the Coalition – with both men and women indicating this equally.

“Research and analysis following the federal election shows the Coalition still has a lot of ground to make up with Australian women voters,” said Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director of the Australia Institute.

“This research shows it’s little wonder Liberal Party Senators like Linda Reynolds are publicly voicing concern that the Coalition had its worst result in 30 years for female representation in the House of Representatives.

“Voters said that the ‘treatment of women in politics’ was the second biggest weakness for the Coalition at the recent election, coming narrowly behind ‘the state of aged care’.”

Last week, Liberal senator Linda Reynolds told Sky News that the Coalition should consider introducing gender quotas after a dismal performance at the election. She also said that some of the “teal” independents are the type of women who would have once run for the Liberal party.

“Many of those women, particularly some of the teals, should have been Liberal candidates but they were not,” Reynolds said.

“So we have got a lot of thinking to do, about how we listen to the message of women who spoke so loudly and clearly at the last election.

“I think we have to stop, we have to listen and acknowledge that women have for some time been telling us they’re not happy with us.”

At the election, just 9 female Coalition MPs were elected to the House of Representatives, while 33 male Coalition MPs were elected.

The analysis from the Australia Institute also shows that Australians thought the Morrison government’s failure to implement a federal integrity commission was a big weakness, with 61 per cent of voters indicating this. 60 per cent said Barnaby Joyce was a weakness for the Coalition at the election, as was their handling of bushfires, floods and other natural disasters.

Cost of living pressures, Scott Morrison himself, and attacks on independent candidates during the campaign, were also named as big weaknesses for the Coalition.

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Sussan Ley, the newly elected deputy Liberal Party leader, was given the shadow portfolios of industry, skills and training, small and family business, and women.

Anne Ruston has been assigned the shadow portfolios of health and aged care, while Jane Hume has been appointed shadow minister for finance.

Former foreign affair minister Marise Payne has agreed to take on the shadow cabinet secretary role but has not been assigned any other portfolio. It has been reported that Payne did not seek to attain a shadow portfolio.

Former attorney-general Michaelia Cash is the new shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, and Karen Andrews will take on the shadow home affairs portfolio, as well as child protection and prevention of family violence.

Sarah Henderson has been elevated to the position of shadow communications minister.

Nationals politicians have also been given some key roles, with Bridget McKenzie given the shadow infrastructure, transport, and regional development. Susan McDonald has been assigned shadow minister for resources, and new Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey has become shadow minister for water and emergency management.

Among the 24-member shadow cabinet, the Liberal party will hold 18 positions, with the Nationals making up the remaining 6 positions. Coalition leader Peter Dutton has demoted some key allies of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, including NSW MP Alex Hawke and former aged care minister, Stuart Robert.

Dutton’s appointment of 10 women to the shadow cabinet matches the new Albanese government’s cabinet, which has a record of 10 women in its 23-member cabinet.

Unlike the Labor government’s cabinet, the Coalition’s shadow cabinet is distinctly lacking in cultural diversity.

Other notable appointments to the shadow cabinet include Angus Taylor as the shadow treasurer, Barnaby Joyce as shadow minister for veterans’ affairs, Andrew Hastie as shadow minister for defence, Ted O’Brien as shadow minister for climate change and energy, and Julian Leeser as shadow attorney-general and Simon Birmingham as shadow minister for foreign affairs.

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Scott Morrison stepped down on Sunday following the result. Former Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg who was touted as a frontrunner to take over, lost the seat of Kooyong in spectacular fashion to teal Independent, Dr Monique Ryan. While a host of other senior, so-called moderate Liberals like Tim Wilson, Dave Sharma and potentially Michael Sukkar were all wiped out.

Now, as new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and freshly appointed Foreign Minister, Penny Wong take to Tokyo for meetings with the Quad, the Liberal-Nationals are sitting at home, scratching their heads and pondering their future as a Coalition.

Certainly, the political tide has shifted and they can never return to what they were formally perceived to be. For too long they’ve struggled with disunity. Infighting and scandals wreak havoc on a once proud institution. There is no collective ideology or shared aspiration in a coalition of mavericks and cowardly moderates.

Men like Matt Canavan feverishly stand up to endorse the future of coal, while others like Simon Birmingham promise they’re making inroads to net zero. Liberal Senator Gerard Rennick spruiks dangerous disinformation on COVID-19 while others encourage Australians to follow public health advice and government orders. Trans kids are targeted in cruel campaigns by candidates like Katherine Deves, while others like Senator Andrew Bragg deem the culture wars as “regrettable, undignified and hurtful”.

It’s been nothing short of a hot mess.

Surrounded by rubble, the LNP must now rebuild. But before doing so, they need to choose their direction.

If Peter Dutton picks up the leadership this week, as is widely reported, the Coalition will never return to moderate roots. They will have to concede that those inner-city seats (Kooyong, Goldstein, Wentworth, North Sydney and the like) will never fall to Liberal hands again.

They will be the party of the far-right. Staunch on defence but never on climate action. Supportive of religious freedom but not of vulnerable minority groups. Proud but never progressive. Exclusive, insular, bigoted and hard– the core tenets of a reborn coalition.

Of course, there is still appetite for this approach from large cohorts of the electorate. They will not exist without cut-through. But they will be fundamentally and irreversibly changed.

The upside of course, is that the two major parties will never converge in the middle. Voters will never again be able to utter the sentiment “they’re all the same”.

So will this future be embraced when Dutton is chosen this week? The moderates might make things messy for a time, but the writing’s on the wall.

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The analysis from the ANU Global Institute for Women’s Leadership shows just 20 per cent of female candidates in the Coalition are contesting winnable seats, compared with 46 per cent of male candidates.

In the Labor Party, the numbers are only slightly better, with 24 per cent of female candidates contesting winnable seats. Meanwhile, 33 per cent of male candidates are contesting winnable seats for Labor.

Professor Michelle Ryan, Director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, said Australia remains a long way off achieve gender equality in parliament, and ensuring more women in major parties are preselected in seats they have a decent chance of winning would help.

“As major political parties make up the vast majority of MPs in the House of Representatives, increasing the number of female candidates they put forward at each election is important in ensuring our Parliament represents the diversity of the community,” Professor Ryan said.

“What is equally important is making sure that these female candidates are running in seats they can reasonably be expected to win.

“We’ve found that not only are there fewer women contesting seats in this election overall – they’re also less likely to win. This is a big loss for our democracy and for Australia.”

This election, 43 per cent of Labor candidates are women, and 29 per cent of Coalition candidates are women.

The analysis shows creating a level playing field for women in politics is not just about preselecting women as candidates. It’s more important for major parties to consider whether they can genuinely win the seats they are preselected in.

Professor Ryan labelled this election a “classic glass cliff moment”, a phenomenon where women are appointed to leadership positions in times of crisis or when a leadership position is precarious. Essentially, it means women are given the opportunity to step in when men aren’t interested.

“While political parties are publicising their efforts to increase the number of women candidates they put forward, we need to look at whether these candidates are simply stepping into seats that males aren’t interested in, or if they will genuinely increase the diversity of our Parliament,” she said.

“On this analysis, it would seem that, sadly, diversity isn’t the driving motivation.”

Professor Ryan said she will keep a close eye on the election results, but would expect female candidates will not do as well as their male counterparts.

“Almost two decades of research into the glass cliff tells us that women will not fare as well as their male counterparts at the ballot box. Especially Coalition candidates. This will not be because women can’t do
politics, but rather because they are preselected in seats that are more risky and more precarious,” Professor Ryan said.

Feature Image: Professor Michelle Ryan. Jamie Kidston/ANU

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The map below shows the 2019 federal election results adjusted for redistributions in Victoria and Western Australia. Victoria gained a seat (Hawke), while WA lost one (Stirling). Hawke is a notional Labor seat, while Stirling was a Liberal seat, so Labor gained one notional seat by redistribution.

ABC election analyst Antony Green published the 2022 election pendulum last August. The Coalition notionally holds 76 of the 151 House of Representatives seats, Labor 69 and there are six crossbenchers. Labor needs to gain four net seats from the Coalition to be the largest party, and seven for a Labor majority.

Of the 151 seats, 142 use the Labor vs Coalition margin in 2019, with the six seats won by crossbenchers using that crossbencher’s margin. The three remaining seats (Grayndler (NSW), Cowper (Vic) and Wills (Vic)) use Labor’s margin against the Greens. The pendulum does not account for Craig Kelly’s defection from the Liberals to the United Australia Party in Hughes, as he was elected as a Liberal.

Electorate colours are blue for Coalition, red for Labor and black for crossbenchers. Distinctions between Liberals, Nationals and Queensland’s LNP have been ignored. Darker colours indicate safer seats. Margins in the maps reflect margins on the pendulum, but crossbench-held seats are always black.

The initial map of Australia appears very Coalition-dominated as the Coalition easily wins most large regional seats. You need to zoom in on big cities such as Sydney and Melbourne to see where Labor dominates.

Where the biggest swings are likely to occur, and where the Coalition could resist

Last May, I wrote about how whites without a university education had moved to the right in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. However, better-educated people have shifted to the left relative to the national vote.

If this pattern continues at this election, the biggest swings to Labor are likely to occur in seats that have long been seen as wealthy urban Liberal heartland. Such areas include Sydney’s north shore and Melbourne’s inner east.

However, the Coalition is likely to do better in swing terms in regional seats with high levels of whites without a university education. Labor could have difficulty regaining the marginal Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon that were lost in 2019, and could be threatened in the coal-mining seat of Hunter (NSW).

I don’t expect Labor to rebound in regional Queensland after it was utterly shellacked there in 2019. Fortunately for Labor, Australia’s population is far more urbanised than in either the UK or the US. I have researched this for a future article.

As price rises on essential items such as food affect low-income people more, inflation may damage the Coalition with these voters, who are also likely to be non-university-educated. So Labor could do better with non-university-educated whites than the above discussion expects.

Polls in WA have had large swings to Labor, but will those swings hold up until election day?

At the March 2021 WA state election, the Coalition was virtually obliterated, but federal elections are different from state elections, and WA has historically been a conservative state at federal elections.

Don’t trust the Queensland state breakdowns

Australian polls usually release their state breakdowns with every poll, but Newspoll typically does its breakdown once a quarter for all polls conducted in that quarter. The smaller state samples mean that estimates of state votes and swings are far more volatile than the national figures.

The best way to analyse state level data is to aggregate it, which The Poll Bludger does with BludgerTrack.

Labor currently has 53.9% two party in NSW, a 5.7% swing since the 2019 election, 56.5% in Victoria, a 3.4% swing, 50.4% in Queensland, an 8.8% swing, 55.1% in WA, a 10.6% swing and 58.4% in SA, a 7.7% swing. Sub-samples from Tasmania and the territories are not large enough for meaningful analysis.

You can use these state-level swings on the map above, which show the seats most likely to fall to Labor on current polling. You could also plug them into Antony Green’s ABC calculator. But don’t trust the Queensland swing of almost 9% to Labor.

Federal Labor has a long history of underperforming its polls in Queensland, and this was particularly the case in 2019. Polls in Queensland in 2019 suggested a 50-50 tie or 51-49 to the Coalition, but the actual result was a crushing 58.4-41.6 to the Coalition.

The last Newspoll breakdowns for the March quarter gave the Coalition a 54-46 lead in Queensland, and this is likely closer to Queensland’s voting intentions than current breakdowns, as Newspoll now weights by education.

Coalition marginals

These maps show the four most marginal Coalition seats, followed by maps of the four most marginal Labor seats. I will briefly comment on each seat.

As I said above, Bass could resist the Labor swing as it’s a regional seat which was gained in 2019. The new Liberal MP can expect a “sophomore” surge. A Telereach poll had the Liberals well ahead in Bass, but seat polls are unreliable.

Chisholm is an inner city seat that should be easily gained by Labor, although Telereach had the Liberals well ahead here.

Boothby is another inner city seat, and both Telereach and uComms seat polls have Labor way ahead.

Braddon has a bigger Liberal margin than Bass, and was also gained from Labor in 2019. If the Liberals are holding Bass, they should also be holding Braddon. But a uComms seat poll gave Labor a 53-47 lead, although analyst Kevin Bonham estimated 50-50 from the primary votes.

Labor marginals

With a strong NSW swing, Labor should have no trouble in Macquarie.

Lilley is an urban Queensland seat, and Labor should retain easily.

Eden-Monaro is a regional NSW seat, but Labor should hold given the Queanbeyan regional city is located in this electorate.

With a 10%+ swing to Labor in WA, Labor will easily hold Cowan.

Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne.

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

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In the meeting, the first chaired by Barnaby Joyce since his return to the deputy prime ministership this week, Nationals senator Matt Canavan, Nationals MP George Christensen and Liberal senator Gerard Rennick, voiced concerns about the $1.7 billion package that was announced in last month’s budget.

According to reports, Canavan told the party room he would not offer his support for the childcare package unless support was also provided for stay-at-home parents.

The comments came after Education Minister Alan Tudge spoke about the government’s proposed increase to the childcare subsidy for families with more than one child in early childhood education and care, and lifting the cap on subsidies for higher income families. The changes were one of the main elements of the women’s economic security package put forward in the 2021 budget, aimed at appeasing Australian women in the aftermath of 2020’s budget that was said to have failed women.

It was reported that George Christensen, the Nationals MP, said that parents who use childcare services are “outsourcing parenting” – a sentiment that angered many female MPs who were also in the meeting.

Can I just check it’s still cool for working dads (eg Basically Every Man in the Coalition Party Room) to “outsource parenting”? https://t.co/o3QO1ndybb

— Georgie Dent (@georgiedent) June 22, 2021

Female Liberals including Celia Hammond, Hollie Hughes, Katie Allen, Perin Davey and Jane Hume apparently spoke up in favour of the childcare package, arguing back that it was about creating equal opportunity and making it easier for women to work.

Hume, the Minister for Women’s Economic Security, told the room about a study released last year that showed 100,000 parents were not working because of the expense of childcare.

Hollie Hughes is said to have told off her male colleagues for “mansplaining” about how women should parent.

After the event, Labor’s spokesperson for Early Childhood Education Amanda Rishworth wrote on Twitter that the fact this debate happened at all in the Coalition party room “beggars belief”.

“So.. today.. in 2021.. a member of the Morrison Joyce Government shamed Australian women for using child care,” Rishworth wrote. “They reportedly labelled it ‘outsourcing parenting’. It just beggars belief.”

Which funnily enough is what almost every male politician with children in Australia’s history has done for eons and apparently it’s all cool!

— Georgie Dent (@georgiedent) June 22, 2021

The proposed childcare changes are expected to be put to parliament on Thursday.

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That’s according to new analysis by corporate adviser Conrad Liveris (who first established the Andrew, John and Peter name dominating phenomenon across CEO positions), which shows the Coalition could end up with as many MPs called Andrew in the House of Representatives as it has women following the next election.

Liveris’ analysis is based on a 3 per cent swing against the Coalition (including Liberal and National seats), which could see them left with just five or six women. Liveris predicts this would see Karen Andrews, Julie Bishop, Sussan Ley, Nola Marino, Kelly O’Dwyer and Melissa Price as the most likely to be safe.

If the Coalition’s female representatives in the House of Reps does dip as low as five, then it would have an equal number of men called Andrew as it does women.

And if it does hit the six mark for women, these Andrews, Michaels, Tonys, Davids and Johns will still be 2.5 times the number of women.

Liveris says on his analysis that it shows a a lack of consideration and planning on how to be representative, and the results could weaken policy development. “Without adequate diversity in the key policy decision making roles, the party rooms, the parties may struggle to create policy that best serves their constituents,” he says.

“This is the House of Representatives, and men named Andrew are likely to be as well represented as women by the Coalition.”

A number of Liberal MPs have recently called for the Liberal Party to consider introducing quotas for women, including Julia Banks, who announced last month that she would be quitting Parliament at the next election due to bullying and intimidation. Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his deputy Josh Frydenberg have said the focus should instead be on “practical measures” like recruitment, mentoring and support for women.

Liveris says he would raise serious questions about the management of any organisation that finds itself in the position of having such a low numbers of women in leadership, especially around how it’s recruiting and retaining staff, and meeting its duties and objectives.

Earlier this year Liveris found there were more men named Andrew running ASX 200 organisations than there were women. That actually represented a slight shift in the first names of ASX CEOs, following a period of leadership renewal across the ASX 200 top positions. Previously it was ‘Peters’, ‘Johns’ and ‘Davids’ that tended to dominate the CEO and chair positions. 

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