The new leader of the opposition, Sussan Ley, has said she is determined to get more women into the ranks of the Liberal Party, despite facing pushback on how she achieves the goal.
Polling leading up to and after the election showed women of Australia were turning away from the party in droves.
“I said we were going to listen, stand by our values, fix our policies and work bloody hard for the Australian people … part of that is respecting, reflecting and representing modern Australia, and that includes women,” Ley said.
“It’s a stark reality that when I walk into the parliament on the first day, I’ll be sitting there as the leader opposite the prime minister, there will be five Liberal women sitting behind me, and that’s a real call to action.”
She also denied the rumours of a divide in the party on the issue of quotas.
Figures like former prime minister Tony Abbott and Ley’s leadership rival Angus Taylor have spoken out, saying gender quotas were against the party’s core philosophy.
Ley said she was not sold on any specific way of getting women into elected positions, but she was determined to do it.
”I’m agnostic about how we get more women, but I’m an absolute zealot that we make it happen,” she said.
“The federated model of the Liberal Party means that state divisions determine their own pre-selection policies and how they go about this.
“I welcome it all about how we get there … we should be having that discussion, but I’m not seeing anyone disagree with the fact that we must get there.”
She said the men of the Liberal Party were “some of our strongest advocates” for getting more women into the party.
A Coalition policy at this year’s election that would have seen public servants forced back into the office was ditched after backlash that it would negatively impact mothers who worked from home.
Ley was elected as the new opposition leader following the loss, making history as the first female leader of the Liberal Party.
”When I came into the parliament in 2001, more women in Australia voted Liberal than for any other party,” Ley said this morning.
“Now, that number has been declining ever since… we’ve got to arrest that decline.”
