{"id":481040,"date":"2026-02-15T06:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/481040\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T06:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:01:07","slug":"liberal-figure-charlotte-mortlock-quits-party-amid-feared-backlash-over-dumping-of-first-female-leader-liberal-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/481040\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal figure Charlotte Mortlock quits party amid feared backlash over dumping of first female leader | Liberal party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liberal women are \u201cincredibly worried\u201d by a potential voter backlash to the ousting of the party\u2019s first female leader, with the high-profile figure Charlotte Mortlock giving up her membership altogether.<\/p>\n

Just days after Sussan Ley<\/a> lost the leadership, Mortlock announced on Sunday she was leaving the party and quitting Hilma\u2019s Network \u2013 a grassroots group she established to bring \u201cLiberal-minded women\u201d together.<\/p>\n

A former Coalition<\/a> staffer to Andrew Bragg, Mortlock has been outspoken in pushing the party to adopt a more progressive stance on the climate crisis, and called for gender quotas to increase female representation to 50% in the party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have decided the time has come for me to step down as executive director of Hilma\u2019s Network and I have also relinquished my Liberal party<\/a> membership,\u201d Mortlock said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to recent events I have decided there are other ways I can support women and Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mortlock said she was proud of the women Hilma\u2019s Network had been able to support through preselections and elections, hosting events that \u201cchallenged the party to evolve\u201d.<\/p>\n

She was also part of a small group who brought a gender quota proposal to the New South Wales<\/a> Liberal executive, to have 40% of federal seats reserved for women-only preselections. That proposal was due to be presented at the state council on 7 March but Liberal sources told Guardian Australia it had been dropped from the agenda by the management committee.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

Ley has announced she will leave parliament. Without her, just five of the 27 MPs in the Liberal party room will be women. In the Senate, 11 of 23 Liberal senators are female.<\/p>\n

The 2022 election review, co-authored by the Liberals\u2019 new deputy leader, Jane Hume, found the party had not addressed the concerns of female voters. It recommended a 50% \u201ctarget\u201d for female candidates and MPs over a binding quota.<\/p>\n

One Liberal woman, who spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity, said: \u201cThe boys are back in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cWe went to elections in 2022 and there were three key issues \u2013 women, the environment and integrity, and we didn\u2019t do anything to address those issues between 2022 and 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m incredibly worried \u2026 here we are in 2026, and so far we\u2019ve blown up net zero and now we think it\u2019s a really good idea to blow up the first female leader of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Liberal woman, who also asked not to be identified, said: \u201cI think the feminist faction are pretty down in the dumps.\u201d<\/p>\n

She told Guardian Australia that while Ley had made \u201csome pretty big fumbles\u201d, the former leader had not been \u201cafforded much grace\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFemale voters had already switched off in 2022, so I felt that they were already not listening to us,\u201d the Liberal said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut anecdotally, I heard when Sussan was elected, people were a little more receptive to [her].\u201d<\/p>\n

The former Liberal cabinet minister Karen Andrews, who has spoken out on the lack of women and the treatment of women in the party, said there could be public backlash.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s possible there will be some pushback from the female supporters of the party who are concerned that maybe Sussan didn\u2019t get a fair go at the leadership,\u201d Andrews said.<\/p>\n

But Andrews agreed with the backers of new leader, Angus Taylor, that Ley had had enough time to prove herself.<\/p>\n

She remained hopeful that Hume, as the co-author of the 2022 review, was \u201cfully aware of the issues that the Liberal party has with female voters\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think women will be looking to make sure that there are other women on the senior frontbench.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to Mortlock\u2019s decision to quit the party, Hume on Sunday said it was \u201ca really sad moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCharlotte has been a great contributor and a great voice for women that hold Liberal values,\u201d she told the ABC Insiders program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that there is real opportunity for women\u2019s voices in the Liberal party, and it\u2019s on us to make sure that we demonstrate to Australian women that the Liberal party is the place for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hilma\u2019s Network\u2019s Victorian representative, Erin Watson, will take over as chief executive, and told the ABC that Mortlock left behind a \u201creally healthy organisation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sad, but actually she leaves behind a really healthy organisation for us to work with and take forward. So I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a bad place to be for Hilma\u2019s at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liberal women are \u201cincredibly worried\u201d by a potential voter backlash to the ousting of the party\u2019s first female…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-481040","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\/481040","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=481040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}