This was published 3 months ago
Opinion
The antics of Liberal men will cost the party the next election
Niki Savva
Award-winning political commentator and authorAfter Gwen Cherne was soundly defeated in the preselection for Scott Morrison’s safe seat of Cook last month, one aspiring female politician observed that the only way a professional woman with small-l liberal leanings could get into parliament was to become a teal.
The formidable former cabinet minister Karen Andrews agrees. “Fair comment,” she says. The only frontbencher with the guts to call on Morrison to quit parliament as soon as news broke of his secret ministries, Andrews adds it is unlikely any of the serving teal MPs would have won a Liberal preselection ballot.
Illustration: Dionne Gain
Tasmanian Bridget Archer, whose outspokenness has kept her on the backbench in Peter Dutton’s recent reshuffle that saw the promotion of almost everyone with a pulse, warns the party is at a crossroads, and it’s time for women to push back. Men, say like Barnaby Joyce, can cross the floor countless times then still become deputy prime minister. Archer has to fight to hang onto her preselection.
NSW Senator Maria Kovacic is not frightened to fight back. Last week, Kovacic wrote a blistering letter to state president Don Harwin demanding an inquiry into allegations by the elected Women’s Council president Berenice Walker that a male member of the state executive sought to remove her from a meeting by claiming she was not entitled to be there.
For her troubles, Senator Kovacic, a moderate, was accused of playing factional politics, even though Walker is in the centre right. Kovacic says factionalism had nothing to do with it.
“I was standing up for a woman after attempts were made to exclude her from a leadership discussion that she had every right to attend,” she said.
The message progressive liberal women are getting after preselection challenges or anonymous undermining in national media, is they need to know their place, or fight on the right side of the culture wars, or stay quiet. The foundations of the broad church are crumbling.
With fewer than one in three female Coalition MPs across all Australian parliaments, liberal women oscillate between anger and despair.
Retiring Senator Linda Reynolds says the power of women was shown at the 2022 election. “Fewer than 30 per cent of women voted Liberal, and women defeated us in 14 of the 18 seats we lost,” she said.
“Until the party understands and harnesses the electoral power of women, mathematically it appears impossible for Peter Dutton to become our next prime minister.”
Andrews reckons it’s time men set aside personal ambition so the party can broaden its appeal. “The Coalition is very focused on playing to our base. But our base is not large enough to get us re-elected,” she says, adding that change “has to come from the leadership of the parliamentary party and the leadership of the party. It’s the only way.”
Andrews says the Liberals should have won Dunkley. She is highly critical of the campaign to relegate shadow minister Anne Ruston to the number two spot on the South Australian Senate ticket by Senator Alex Antic, which she described as “brutal”. She and others believe it contributed to the loss a week later in the byelection for the state seat of Dunstan, especially after Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young letterboxed the electorate to report Antic’s antics.
Further, Andrews believes Dutton should have promoted Archer to the frontbench because Archer reaches people the party needs but can’t get. Archer’s own preselection remains unresolved after threats from fellow Liberal Gavin Pearce not to renominate unless Archer was dumped.
“We have a choice,” Archer says. “We can continue to say the party does not represent me and walk away or get involved and fight for it.”
Archer will fight to stay. If she loses, it will speak volumes about where the Liberal party is and where it’s headed.
After his win, Antic displayed a remarkable talent for delivering multiple sledges in one short sentence, dismissing critics by saying “the ‘gender card’ is nothing but a grievance narrative, constructed by the activist media and a disgruntled political class”.
Andrews’ response was succinct: “What a load of rubbish.”
According to opponents, Antic – who was quarantined during COVID after refusing to say if he was vaccinated – won after signing up Pentecostals and anti-vaxxers, while his supporters argued his promotion would woo One Nation voters. There was a time when Liberals (including Tony Abbott, who backed Antic) regarded that vote as toxic. Now it’s an elixir for an embattled party. They were right the first time.
They need to read former Nationals senator Ron Boswell’s book Not Pretty, But Pretty Effective on his demolition of the League of Rights and Pauline Hanson.
In his preselection speech, Antic complained that “we are living in a world where governments can’t even define women”. Liberal candidates are now warned to have the definition ready because it is asked so often by preselectors.
Antic took a few minutes to respond to the criticisms when contacted by this column. Again, showing equal measures of contempt for critics and his aptitude for sledges, he said: “South Australians care as much about the order of the Liberal Party Senate ticket as they do about the underwater basket weaving World Cup. The only ones who are intrigued by this ballot are career politicians and their mates in the media.”
Teals consolidate, Greens advance and Anthony Albanese (who boasts a majority of women in caucus) appoints another accomplished, impressive woman, Samantha Mostyn, as governor-general. Liberal men elbow out competent women, argue it’s not an issue, then rub their noses in their defeats.
Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.
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