ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas pushes Liberal Party to adopt gender quotas as public broadcaster pledges impartiality

Sky News AU

6 hours ago

Star ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas has called on the Liberal Party to impose controversial gender quotas or face electoral backlash despite the public broadcaster's renewed promise to uphold editorial impartiality.
Ms Karvelas called for gender quotas in a fiery opinion piece on Monday, claiming voters would 'turn their backs' on the Liberal Party if it refused.
ABC journalists are bound by strict impartiality policies which 'requires news and information to be gathered and presented with due impartiality'.
They are also forbidden from 'unduly' favouring 'one perspective over another'.
However, these rules didn't stop the ABC's star reporter from attacking the Liberal Party's refusal to establish gender quotas.
'Vibes don't get women elected, and if women are not at the table in large numbers Australian voters will continue to turn their backs on the Liberal Party,' she wrote, in a scathing opinion piece, published by the ABC on Monday.
She compared the Liberal Party's failure to implement gender quotas to an inability to climb a 'cultural mountain'.
'The issue of gender quotas is the one philosophical and cultural mountain that the Liberal Party has never been prepared to climb. And even by the party's own reckoning, it is failing,' she said.
'Beyond the hard arithmetic of imposing quotas, every other strategy is little more than vibes and positive thinking.'
Ms Karvelas also attacked former Liberal Leader Peter Dutton for refusing to appear before the National Press Club.
'Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is approaching it as if there's a giant sign above her head that screams, 'I'm not Peter Dutton',' she wrote.
'Her speech at the National Press Club this week was loaded with hints that fit this thesis
'Even the decision to address the National Press Club itself — a forum Dutton viewed as a space of the Canberra journalistic elite and snubbed consistently — was a signal.'
Ms Karvelas also took aim at Australians on social media who deemed gender quotas and regular Welcome to Country speeches 'woke', dismissing the critics as 'right wing'.
'If you swim in right wing algorithms — especially on X — you'll see that all of these choices by Ley are being mocked as symbols of 'Labor Party-light',' she wrote.
'In the subterranean online world Ley's leadership is being painted as too 'woke'.'
She even warned Ley's leadership could be under threat by those in the Liberal Party who agreed with the criticism.
'Ley's job over the next year is fraught with danger,' Ms Karvelas wrote.
'She might be given a period of brief peace but most Liberals you speak to privately concede that it will be difficult to keep that peace for the entire term.'
Ms Ley suggested she was open to gender quotas at her National Press Club address, quickly before shadow defence minister and former leadership rival Angus Taylor rejected the proposition.
"If some state divisions choose to implement quotas, that is fine. If others don't, that is also fine," she said.
It comes after SkyNews.com.au revealed the extraordinary lengths ABC journalists were forced to go through in order to achieve radical race, gender and disability targets.
The quotas — which included specific targets for women, disabled people and culturally diverse individuals — prompted criticism of the ABC.
Following the public broadcaster's high-profile court loss to Antoinette Lattouf, the ABC managing director doubled down on the ABC's commitment to impartiality.
'I wish to stress the particular and fundamental obligations the ABC and its employees have to be independent and impartial in our work,' he said in a statement.
Ms Ley has suggested that gender quotas could be a good idea if state divisions of the party wanted to pursue them.
However, Mr Taylor has publicly rejected quotas, arguing they would 'subvert democracy'.
'I've never been a believer in quotas to achieve that, but it's clear we have to take proactive action to achieve (female representation),' he told Sky News on Sunday.