{"id":272640,"date":"2025-11-09T06:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/272640\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T06:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:05:08","slug":"gender-quotas-off-the-table-after-catastrophic-federal-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/272640\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender quotas off the table after catastrophic federal loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review into the 2022 election loss by Senator Jane Hume and former party federal director Brian Loughnane, set targets for female representation and recommended the creation of the Margaret Guilfoyle Network to \u201cunite and elevate Liberal women\u201d, but did not recommend the adoption of quotas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that has really done much, but that\u2019s not a fault of the network itself. There has to be mechanisms across every state to actually progress those women,\u201d the Liberal said.<\/p>\n

\"Then<\/p>\n

Then opposition leader Peter Dutton in April on his petrol station tour during the election campaign.Credit: James Brickwood<\/p>\n

Charlotte Mortlock, the executive director of Hilma\u2019s Network \u2014 a group seeking to boost a \u201crapid influx of women and a lowering of the average age of Liberal Party members\u201d \u2014 said many in the party were pushing for quotas and the idea was \u201cstill on the cards to be achieved this term\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a decision that cannot be made federally, it must be made by the state divisions, which is why we weren\u2019t expecting it to be included in the federal review,\u201d Mortlock said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal review\u2019s position on quotas does not alter our ongoing commitment to improving female representation across the party at every level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

Another Liberal who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the party \u201cabsolutely need to preselect more women in winnable seats\u201d, but wasn\u2019t sold on quotas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m yet to get my head around how they would work in the Liberal Party structure. Labor have a whole let of mechanisms through their factional divisions, so quotas are an easier fit in the Labor Party. Even though there are groupings, we don\u2019t have that formality,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

In her first major speech as leader<\/a> in June, Ley said she was open to quotas but not wedded to them, adding that \u201cwhat is not fine is not having enough women\u201d.<\/p>\n

The party selected mostly younger women in a group of seats it thought were winnable but did not win, including Kooyong and Chisholm in Victoria, Parramatta, Warringah, Wentworth and Robertson in NSW, South Australia\u2019s Boothby and Lyons in Tasmania.<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s election policies and presentation turned off many women voters, as the review will make clear when it is made public after parliament rises for the year.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/p>\n

Peter Dutton campaigning in Kooyong with Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer. Independent candidate Monique Ryan retained the formerly blue-ribbon Liberal seat at the 2025 election.Credit: James Brickwood<\/p>\n

The Liberal Party\u2019s gender imbalance in its ranks of MPs has barely changed in a decade. One third of Liberal MPs are women, despite the party having a target of 50 per cent female representation.<\/p>\n

The election probe is being kept secret until later in the year, at which point it will be made public and form an important part of writing the history of \u2013 and apportioning blame for \u2013 the party\u2019s worst election loss.<\/p>\n

A critical observation of Minchin and Goward is that the Coalition failed to change its psyche, tone, campaigning and media strategy after losing the 2022 election to Labor and going from government to opposition after nine years in power.<\/p>\n

One source familiar with the findings said it had become clear that Dutton\u2019s team included former Morrison government ministers who \u201clacked the hunger\u201d to shift from a bureaucratic, cautious governing style to the nimble approach needed to hold the government to account.<\/p>\n

Unlike when Tony Abbott and Anthony Albanese were opposition leaders, Dutton\u2019s operation made its daily political decisions without continuous input, data and research from the party\u2019s professional campaigners, led by federal director Andrew Hirst, who ran the winning 2019 campaign and two subsequent election losses.<\/p>\n

It was widely reported during the election campaign<\/a> that Dutton\u2019s office and Hirst\u2019s team had a poor working relationship, a claim substantiated by Minchin and Goward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dutton opposition was totally obsessed with unity, and outside of the Voice [to parliament Indigenous referendum], never morphed into a fully functioning political unit,\u201d one source said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A review into the 2022 election loss by Senator Jane Hume and former party federal director Brian Loughnane,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-272640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}