The Liberal Party has chosen a male candidate to run for the seat of Bragg in the upcoming South Australian by-election, prompting a former Liberal female staffer to give serious consideration to an independent run.
Lawyer Jack Batty, who has previously worked for Christopher Pyne and George Brandis, won the Liberal pre-selection vote last night, ahead of female candidates Melissa Jones and Cara Miller.
Chelsey Potter was ruled ineligible to run as a pre-selection candidate because she had only recently rejoined the Liberal Party after working for independents Lou Nicholson and Liz Habermann at the state and federal elections respectively.
Ms Potter said she was "strongly considering" a run to give "better representation" for the people of Bragg.
The seat covers most of the City of Burnside and overlaps with Sturt on a federal level, where the Liberals' James Stevens had a scare on May 21 against female Labor candidate Sonja Baram.
"It's shocking that the Liberal Party is not learning the lessons here," Ms Potter told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"Only two weeks ago, the people of Bragg, the people of Sturt, sent a very clear message that things have to change.
"And on the first opportunity we had to change things we've sort of reverted to type.
The by-election will be held on July 2.
Push for more female Liberal candidates
There are now only two Liberal women in the lower house of South Australia's parliament — Ashton Hurn and Penny Pratt — after the resignation of Vickie Chapman, which caused the by-election.
Opposition Leader David Speirs said the Liberals' female representation in parliament was "just not good enough".
"I am going to use my time as leader to make that better," he said.
Mr Speirs voted for one of the female candidates for the by-election but refused to endorse a woman ahead of the ballot of party members to give them an upper hand.
He said that would have been "completely inappropriate".
"We had a couple hundred people come together last night and choose our candidate," he said.
"They picked an excellent candidate.
The Greens have chosen Jim Bastiras as their candidate in Bragg.
Labor will pre-select a candidate out of retired law professor Rick Sarre and lawyer Alice Rolls.
Batty focusing on Bragg campaign
In 2014, Mr Batty ran against former premier Jay Weatherill in his seat of Cheltenham, but only got 36 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
He said he as "hugely honoured" to be chosen as the Bragg candidate this time around.
He said he would support "all efforts" by Mr Speirs to get more Liberal women in parliament, but for now would focus on campaigning in Bragg.
Ms Chapman, the former Bragg MP, resigned as deputy premier and stood aside from her position as attorney-general last year while the ombudsman started an investigation into her decision to refuse approval for a port on Kangaroo Island.
Last month, he cleared her of any conflict of interest, maladministration or breach of the ministerial code of conduct.
Ms Chapman had already announced she would quit politics, on the same day as Mr Speirs became Opposition Leader.
Ms Chapman first won the seat in 2002 and was South Australia's first female deputy premier and attorney-general.
She did not publicly endorse any of the pre-selection candidates.
