One job Liberal senator Jane Hume is holding on to
We return to the evergreen subject of the Liberal Party and its woman problem (or rather, as we quipped last week, its man problem)
Party elder Alan Stockdale 's ill-considered comments last week about 'assertive women' giving Liberal blokes a hard time rightly enraged members pushing to improve the party's parliamentary gender representation.
Those comments landed right as CBD was hearing gripes about the fate of the Margaret Guilfoyle Network, a forum for Liberal women that many didn't even know existed.
The network, named after Australia's first female cabinet minister, was quietly launched last year, despite being a recommendation of an internal review into the Liberals' 2022 election loss. No doubt there will be an announcement about another one of those soon.
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Party sources were flabbergasted that the network had held just a handful of Zoom meetings and networking events since kicking off. And that Liberal women were expected to pay literal money to solve a problem caused by men. Indeed, membership costs a modest $150 a year for non-party members, $100 for those in the party and $50 for under 35s.
But a party spokesman wanted to set the record straight.
'The Margaret Guilfoyle Network has held events in almost every state and territory, and held multiple Zoom events including briefings on the Queensland election, the US election and guest speakers including NZ Finance Minister Nicola Willis,' he said.
'Now that the election's over, the MGN will deliver even more events for its members.'
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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. The costs were gargantuan but the long-term punt on unfailing US delivery was far greater because it relied on future administrations and unknowable security challenges in the decades ahead. Change of president? No worries. Everybody in Washington is onboard, the story went. Now, with Anthony Albanese on his way to the Americas for a possible first-ever meeting with Donald Trump, AUKUS is suddenly under active review to assess its consistency with Trump's populist rubric, "America First". Few really know where Trump stands or if he has ever thought about AUKUS. What is clear is that the president's acolytes are fuming about Australian sanctions on far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet and are looking askance at Albanese's recent statements affirming Australia's exclusive right to set levels of defence spending. Then there's the whole trade/tariff argument. READ MORE: These eddies will make for trickier conditions than Albanese might have imagined only days ago. Might it even see a bilateral meeting delayed or downgraded as a rebuke to Australia? With friends like Trump, literally anything is possible. Which, by the way, is why blind faith in AUKUS has always been disreputable.
