‘It’s really bad’: New numbers paint a bleak picture for Liberal women

A new analysis of the number of female Liberal MPs across the country’s parliaments paints a bleak picture, with proportions as low as 12.5 per cent prompting a warning that women are “sick and tired” of the party’s sluggish attempts to address its gender problem.

The NSW party improved its representation at this month’s state election; while results are not yet finalised, women will take up to 44 per cent of Liberal spots across the lower and upper houses, compared with 28 per cent after the last election.

Charlotte Mortlock’s Hilma Network will track the number of Liberal women in parliaments.Credit:Edwina Pickles

But the data calculated by Hilma’s Network, which aims to grow the number of women in Liberal politics, points to a serious problem in lower houses – the domain of party leaders – across the country, where the party’s proportion of female MPs in several states is below 20 per cent.

From Tuesday, Hilma’s Network will analyse and publish Liberal women’s representation across the country’s parliaments to throw a spotlight on the problem and hold the party to account. “It’s all really bad,” the network’s founder, Charlotte Mortlock, said of the analysis.

“There’s not a state or federal election until October 2024. This is the window to fix the gender issue for good because we Liberal women most of all are sick and tired of talking about it and pretending it’s OK … other parties evolve on gender while we’re stuck in the ’90s.”

The website’s data, which will be updated quarterly, show problems in lower houses across the country. Just 20 per cent of Coalition MPs in the lower house of federal parliament are women. Queensland only has one house, and just 18 per cent of its Liberal National Party MPs are female.

In South Australia, 12.5 per cent of Liberal MPs in the lower house are female, and in Victoria it’s 21 per cent, Hilma’s figures show. Fifty per cent of Liberals in the West Australian lower house are women, but that’s because the party only won two seats (Labor holds 53, and the Nationals four).

Female representation in upper houses is higher, ranging from 75 per cent in Tasmania (three out of four seats) to 45 per cent in the federal parliament.

The website will not yet include NSW, where results are still being finalised. However, the Herald’s data shows there will be nine women out of 25 seats (36 per cent) if the Liberals’ male candidate wins Ryde, and nine out of 24 (37.5 per cent) if he does not.

It’s an improvement on the 2019 election result, when there were 10 women in 35 Liberal seats (28.5 per cent). However, Mortlock said the improved representation was “only because so many men lost”.

If the Liberals win a still-contested seat in the NSW upper house, its female representation will be 60 per cent, and if it doesn’t, it will be 55.5 per cent. In late December, then-premier Dominic Perrottet engineered a deal under which three men were sacrificed from the upper house ticket to make way for women.

Across the Coalition, women will hold between 30.5 and 31.5 per cent of seats in the NSW lower house, depending on Ryde, compared with 27 per cent after the 2019 election. Some 47 per cent of Labor MPs across both houses will be women.

Mortlock said targets had failed to fix the party’s gender problem. She blamed a failure to back motherhood statements with by action and accountability.

“The women in the Liberal Party are constantly silenced by those internally who say it’s navel-gazing to speak about ourselves, or detrimental to our vote to discuss internal issues,” she said. “But you know what’s really detrimental? A federal representation of 29 per cent in 2023.

“Our membership is out of sync with broader society, and that has been completely obvious over the past couple of years. There are people in the base of our party who would prefer us to lose than make any individual concession.”

A NSW Liberal spokesman said the party was proud of the campaigning and contribution of all its candidates, who were from a range of backgrounds. “Our newly elected and re-elected members will play an important role in the next parliament advocating for the needs of communities across the state,” he said.

Federal Liberal MP Sussan Ley, the shadow minister for the status of women, was contacted for comment.

Michael Turner from Freshwater Strategy said female Coalition candidates performed better than male ones in NSW, particularly in the seats under threat from teal independents in northern parts of Sydney which were populated by engaged, professional women.

For example, there was an average swing of 6.1 per cent against Liberal candidates Kellie Sloane (Vaucluse) and Felicity Wilson (North Shore), compared to 12.5 per cent against six of their male colleagues in seats such as Lane Cove and Pittwater.

“It’s a no-brainer now to run women where you can in those Coalition seats,” Turner said. “It’s certainly not going to count against them.” Gender alone was not enough, however; candidate quality was also key, Turner said.

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