The former Liberal MP Jenny Ware says her party must implement gender quotas for candidates for office, warning the opposition \u201ccannot get back into government\u201d without putting forward candidates who are more reflective of the broader community.<\/p>\n
Ware, who lost her seat of Hughes at the 2025 election, said it was \u201cdeeply embarrassing\u201d that the Liberal party executive had not released its own review of the electoral wipeout, and which was then tabled in parliament by Anthony Albanese this week.<\/a><\/p>\n The review found there was a need for urgent change the party, Ware said. She accused some in the Liberal partyroom of having \u201cwasted\u201d 10 months destabilising the former leader Sussan Ley instead of acting on the review\u2019s findings and formulating new policy, and said it was critical the party engaged more with women and multicultural Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Australian people have told us they don\u2019t like what the Liberal party looks like. They don\u2019t like, overall, the candidates that we\u2019re putting up,\u201d Ware told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is now time that, federally, that we have quotas. Even if it\u2019s just for the next two elections, even if we say we\u2019re not going to entrench them longer term. But this is now at crisis point, and we, as a political party, have one job, and that is to win elections.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Ware was first elected in 2022, winning Hughes on a 57-43 margin, but was unexpectedly unsuccessful in 2025; her New South Wales seat was not on the target seats list for either major party, with one Labor campaigner reportedly<\/a> calling their victorious David Moncrieff an \u201caccidental\u201d winner.<\/p>\n She claimed Liberal losses in the metropolitan seats of Menzies, Sturt and Banks, and their failure to win now-Teal seats like Bradfield, Kooyong and Wentworth, were \u201cbecause of the federal campaign\u201d run by Peter Dutton. In particular, Ware claimed the unpopular push to end work from home rules for public servants<\/a> \u201ckilled me\u201d in Hughes, and lamented a lack of policies on aged care or childcare, which she claimed could have helped gain support from families and working women.<\/p>\n Ware said she did not want her comments to be perceived as \u201csour grapes\u201d but said the Liberal party needed to change its approach.<\/p>\n