How to annoy Liberal women. Tell them they are ‘sufficiently assertive'
With the Liberal Party's founding father looming over their shoulder – quite literally – two octogenarian men from Victoria thought it wise to lecture women on the future of the NSW party. Women are now 'sufficiently assertive' in the Liberal Party, ex-Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale bemoaned, that it is probably time to start giving blokes a leg up.
Stockdale and former Victorian senator Richard Alston, combined age 164, positioned themselves under a portrait of Robert Menzies as they fronted the NSW Liberal Women's Council on Tuesday night to argue why they should continue to run the troubled division.
The sole female and NSW representative on the federal takeover committee, appointed by former leader Peter Dutton, is Peta Seaton, who was seemingly the third wheel as Stockdale held court, reminding the NSW Liberals exactly why they still have a women's problem.
'Women are sufficiently assertive now,' Stockdale told the virtual meeting of at least 50 women, 'that we should be giving some thought to whether we need to protect men's involvement'. Great idea. Reverse quotas for men. If it were not so ludicrous and offensive, it would be comical.
A brief look back to why Stockdale and Co are running NSW. Dutton imposed a federal takeover on the NSW Liberals after the embarrassing debacle of the party failing to nominate 144 candidates for last year's local government elections. The trio (which was initially going to be all men until wiser heads prevailed) was sent in to clean up the mess and help NSW secure an election win for the Liberals. They have failed to do either. Now the administrators are arguing for an extension of their term, which was due to expire on June 30.
After his comment, which followed discussion over whether he would commit to quotas to get more Liberal women preselected, Stockdale chuckled, according to several women who were on the call. But if it was meant as a joke, Stockdale did not read the room. These women were already angry. Now they are positively apoplectic.
Charlotte Mortlock, a former journalist and Liberal staffer who founded Hilma's Network, which supports women for Liberal preselection, last month launched a petition calling on the party to establish gender quotas. 'Women in the party and across the country more broadly have been demanding the Liberal Party improves its female representation for decades,' Mortlock wrote. 'We have failed to act.' As of Wednesday, the petition had 449 signatures.
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To its credit, the UK allowed seven years for its Chilcot inquiry into Britain's disastrous enthusiasm for the Iraq invasion. It found that non-military options had been deliberately overlooked, that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that the UK had too willingly agreed with America in sexing up intelligence. An easily beguiled Australia was along for the ride, unlawful and unethical as it all was. Yet an Australian equivalent of the Chilcot process was never embarked on in the years after. Lessons went unlearned. When it was unveiled in September 2021, AUKUS quickly became the new big thing - one of those binary faith questions in mainstream politics and most media. There were only two types: believers and apostates. The tripartite Anglophone deal for nuclear subs came as a rude shock to the French who had been contracted (by the Turnbull government) to build our next generation of conventionally powered submarines. 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