WA Liberals reluctant on idea of implementing gender quotas despite Sussan Ley’s backing

The WA Liberal Party is resisting implementing quotas for recruiting more women, as insiders insist the approach it took over the past three years worked well because a third of its candidates at recent elections were women.

Federal Liberal leader Sussan Ley has called on her party to look seriously at quotas or merit lists or other strong methods to ensure it preselects more female candidates, saying the decline in numbers of women in the party is a real problem that must be stemmed.

Ms Ley acknowledged this week that she couldn’t order the State branches of the party what to do, but she asserted that the “divisions will work with me” to create change.

“We should be having that discussion (about how to recruit more women) but I’m not seeing anyone disagree with the fact that we must get there … we must increase the number of women,” she said on Friday.

But senior frontbencher Angus Taylor undercut her push by declaring quotas would “subvert democracy”.

Describing himself as a “crusader” for women, he said the party should continue to recruit and mentor talented women without implementing targets.

“I’m a great champion for capable, talented women, let me tell you, and I always will be,” he said.

WA Liberal sources said the party’s Blueprint program that ran over the past three years worked similarly and had led to women putting their hand up to run.

Multiple sources said the party had preselected women in winnable seats for the State election, as shown by those who only just missed out such as in South Perth, Pilbara and Kalgoorlie — it just didn’t win enough of those seats.

In the State election, 30 per cent of lower house Liberals candidates were women. However, in the most marginal Labor seats, which the Liberals viewed as likely winnable, the party had 40 per cent female candidates.

Federally, women made up 25 per cent of WA Liberal candidates, with Melissa Price in Durack and Michaelia Cash, whose Senate seat wasn’t up for election this time, the only two heading to Canberra after May 3.

WA Liberals are strongly resistant to any possibility east coast party executives would dictate how they choose candidates, suggesting that would be a bad look when the State division has strong female leaders in Senator Cash and president Caroline Di Russo.

Hilma’s Network founder Charlotte Mortlock said she was fed up with vague promises to listen and do better, taking took aim at Mr Taylor directly, along with Tony Abbott who also publicly opposed quotas.

“If there were alternatives to quotas, why weren’t they rolled out after the last smashing?” she said.

“After the last election when we his a historic three-decade low for female representation and that didn’t rouse you to organically lift your weight for women … excuse me if I don’t believe you this time that you genuinely have any intention of helping women.”

The push back comes as The West can reveal new Member for Forrest Ben Small was involved in a blow-up during a party executive meeting earlier this month.

During the meeting, several senior men, mainly from Victoria, pushed back at Ms Ley’s insistence the NSW Women’s Council head be included in the team sorting out the NSW division but she ultimately prevailed.

However, another source said the argument wasn’t about the Women’s Council but the fact the motion had been moved with short notice and the principle that it sought to keep people in place from the state executive being taken over.

Ms Ley referred in her National Press Club speech this week to the party’s proud history of women’s involvement, dating back to its founding by Robert Menzies in conjunction with the suffragette organisation the Australian Women’s National League when the Women’s Council were enshrined in the Liberal structure.

Federal vice-president Fiona Scott said the whole party had to remember its history.

“We’ve got to be zealots, we’ve got to find pathways forward but we’ve got to remember where we came from. We came out of the suffragette movement,” she said.

“We’re not going to fix the women problem by crushing that.”

Senior Labor minister Tanya Plibersek said while her party had quotas in place, it rarely had to resort to enforcing them because they focused everyone’s minds on the task of finding more women to run in preselections in the first place.