Women in the Party and across the country more broadly have been demanding the Liberal Party improves its female representation for decades. We have failed to act. 

A “target” was established in 2015 and then again in 2022. As a Party that values personal accountability, it is unfortunate that we failed to hold ourselves to account and neither target moved the dial. Last election (2022) we had our worst result in 30 years for female representation. Now after the most recent election, we have just five (potentially six) women remaining in the Lower House. 

The frustrations of women, both Liberal members and voters, continue to fall on deaf ears. 

As a result, you are invited to join calls for quotas to be established immediately. It is time for the Leaders of our Party - both State and Federal - to publicly declare whether they support this mechanism. Something this serious cannot be left on the shoulders of the grassroots movement alone. Women deserve to know where they stand. 

Even if you are not a member of the Liberal Party, or you don’t vote our way, we should all want our democracy to be the best it can be. The Liberal Party, as a major Party, would operate better with improved female representation and thus provide better outcomes for Australians. 

We recognise this is not a perfect outcome but a necessary one. To quote Claire Lehmann at the weekend in The Australian: “Quotas are not the ideal solution. They do represent a departure from pure meritocratic principles. But…quotas are a pragmatic response to an existential threat. The choice for the party is not between quotas and purity - it's between quotas and irrelevance.” 

To finish, I will borrow a few paragraphs from then NSW Deputy Leader Ron Phillips who spoke loudly in support of women at the Liberal Women’s Federal Forum in 1995. Some 30 years ago….

“We have all been conned if anyone thinks that success in politics is based on merit alone. A cursory glance around the parliaments of this country should free anyone from the misapprehension of merit being the primary guiding principle of getting into parliament.

In fact, men only started to talk about the importance of merit when women began to contest selection in numbers. So women should not let merit get in the way of getting into parliament. Men don't.

If as a society generally and a political community specifically, we are serious about women in parliament; if we do all want more women in parliament, then we must stop the preoccupation with theory, rhetoric and excuses, and accelerate this historic change.

Precedents for affirmative action: Ever since the establishment of the liberal party, women have been constitutionally guaranteed equal representation within the party. This is a proud boast often repeated. So the idea of equal representation and affirmative action is nothing new for us or for Robert Menzies. 

We also know that party state executives will intervene in preselections when they feel moved to. E.G. The NSW State Executive recently intervened to put John Fahey into a federal seat and ease 4 other federal candidates out of their preselections. Why can't they do this for women?”

Thank you,

Charlotte Mortlock, Berenice Walker - President of NSW Liberal Women’s Council, Adelaide Cuneo - Vice President of NSW Liberal Women’s Council, Rob and Sophie Stokes