{"id":30396,"date":"2025-07-29T16:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30396\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T16:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:45:07","slug":"liberal-mp-says-women-prefer-hairdressing-and-men-drawn-to-maths-in-debate-over-gender-quotas-liberal-national-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30396\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal MP says women prefer hairdressing and men drawn to maths in debate over gender quotas | Liberal National party"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liberal National party<\/a> MP Terry Young has rubbished a push for gender quotas in the federal opposition, telling parliament that men and women are naturally drawn to different kinds of jobs and that professions such as hairdressing and nursing will always be dominated by women.<\/p>\n

The Longman MP<\/a> said that men were more drawn to jobs involving maths or physical exertion, including construction or trades.<\/p>\n

Labor pounced on the comments in question time on Tuesday, with the infrastructure minister, Catherine King, likening them to statements by the former prime minister<\/a> Tony Abbott.<\/p>\n

\u201cA note to the Liberals and Nationals: it\u2019s 2025,\u201d King said. \u201cYour gender never means a job is off-limits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young made the comments in a speech to parliament\u2019s Federation Chamber. Describing himself as speaking on behalf of \u201cthe forgotten Australians\u201d, Young said \u201ccrazy policies and ideologies\u201d were damaging the country, insisting he would be \u201cfilthy\u201d if one of his three daughters did not get a job because of their gender.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I would be just as filthy if they got a job because of their gender,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI simply cannot understand why we cannot accept that men and women have vocations that the majority of each gender is drawn to. Men tend to be more drawn to vocations that involve maths, physical exertion like construction and trades.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhereas women in the main tend to be drawn to careers that involve women and care and other people. Vocations like hairdressers, nursing, social workers and the like will always be more female-dominated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to ensure those who aren\u2019t wired this way from the opposite sex have the same opportunities as everyone else. That is only right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe days of posters of half-naked women in lunchrooms needs to be put away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young said in his business career, he had promoted and hired exclusively on merit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the other problems created by this well-meaning but deluded ideology [of quotas] is that many who achieve positions on their own merit have no respect from work colleagues, as many of them say they got the job because they are this gender, or this sexuality, or Indigenous.<\/p>\n

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\u201cQuotas say women or Indigenous people or any other cohort that aren\u2019t good enough to get a position on merit \u2026 we\u2019ll create a quota for them. This is demeaning and it is insulting to these people and should never be. [Work positions] should always be based on merit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young labelled Labor a \u201cmental\u201d government before canvassing vehicle emissions standards, housing shortages, immigration, criticism of the UN and opposition to large-scale renewables projects.<\/p>\n

Young even suggested the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, might be suffering from Munchausen syndrome, a condition where individuals fake illnesses to receive attention or sympathy.<\/p>\n

King told question time that Young\u2019s comments ignored the many women of diverse backgrounds already in parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat an absolute crock,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople used to think women were not drawn to this place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Liberal party is now debating mechanisms to boost female representation in its parliamentary ranks. The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, said last month she was a \u201czealot\u201d on recruiting more women but stopped short of endorsing quotas<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liberal National party MP Terry Young has rubbished a push for gender quotas in the federal opposition,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-30396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30396","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=30396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}