AARON PATRICK: Liberal Party’s women problem sparks a memo for old male politicians: no more sexist jokes

The world delivered a message to old male politicians this week: give up the sexist jokes.

After one of the men appointed to run the NSW Liberal Party, Alan Stockdale, quipped that male candidates might require protection, he was verbally pummelled by women and men from the left and right.

“Women are sufficiently assertive now,” the former Victorian treasurer told an online meeting of Liberal women, “that we should be giving some thought to whether we need to protect men’s involvement.”

Stockdale apologised after the comment was leaked, and it became obvious his opponents plan to use them to argue he and two other federally appointed administrators should stand down at the end of this month.

“I encourage assertive women to join the Liberal Party,” federal leader Sussan Ley said.

Her deputy, Ted O’Brien, told the ABC: “We need more women engaging with our party, running for our party.”

The rights of women

That the Liberal Party struggles to attract women candidates, members and voters is no secret. How to fix the problem is less clear.

Conservative women often complain the discussion ignores them. In Victoria, male members of the party establishment, led by former premier Jeff Kennett, continue to side with a (male) former leader who tried to expel a school teacher-turned-MP, Moira Deeming, who organised a protest over the trans-gender debate.

While Ms Deeming’s Christian-inspired views are too right-wing for many in the Liberal Party, her position that trans-gender women (people born male who identify as women) should have separate change rooms and sporting teams is shared by Germaine Greer, an Australian feminist who was one of the main intellectual forces for equality in the 1980s when the Hawke Labor government introduced the Sex Discrimination Act.

One of the party’s most forceful women, Peta Credlin, was the subject of personality critiques for years when she ran then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s office from 2013 to 2015.

She argues Ms Deeming should be protected not because she is a woman, but because she was defamed by her leader.

Her supporters continue to feel threatened, according to Ms Credlin.

“Anyone seen to be defending Deeming was to be ostracised and in not-so veiled threats from Kennett, he declared her supporters inside the parliamentary Liberal Party ‘disloyal and perhaps even treacherous’ and threatened to have them ‘dealt with in due course when preselections are called for the next election’” she wrote in a national newspaper today.

“And yet the Liberal Party wonders why it has a problem with women if this is how one of their own is treated.”

Debating quotas

Ten years ago, the Labor and Liberal parties set a 50 per cent target for female parliamentary representation by 2025.

The Liberals failed, badly.

Across all nine Australian parliaments last year, there were more than twice as many male Coalition MPs as women MPs, according to a tally by the Australia Institute, a left-wing think tank. Labor and the Greens had more women than men.

The figures have not changed much since.

The struggle to correct the disparity is why Liberals continue to debate gender quotas — the question Mr Stockdale mocked on Tuesday’s meeting with the NSW Liberal Women’s Council, a forum designed to attract more women to the party.

His future in the role will be determined by the Liberal Party’s federal executive in a couple of weeks’ time. Party sources say Ms Ley’s views will likely be pivotal.

As a woman who rose to the top of politics by being more consultative than assertive, Ms Ley’s response to this latest embarrassment will be a fascinating indicator of how she intends to run the Liberal Party.