Women account for just a third of the lower house candidates preselected by the Liberal party ahead of the 25 March state election – putting them behind Labor’s 45%, the Greens’ even split and their own target of 40%.
The premier, Dominic Perrottet, conceded his party was falling short and it was not good enough, saying he wanted half of all candidates pursued at the next election to be women, and insisting he was open to all ideas, including quotas.
With just two weeks until polling day for what analysts expect to be one of the closest state elections in recent memory, Perrottet said his party needed to do better.
“The more diverse our cabinets and parliaments are, the better the decision-making across the state,” he said.
“Our upper house ticket has 50% women and that is significant progress. Is it good enough? No.”
Standing alongside senior Liberal Natalie Ward who was blocked from moving to the lower house last year against the wishes of senior party figures, Perrottet was open to ideas already employed by the Labor party such as quotas.
“I’m open to all ideas to achieve that target of 50% [in the lower house],” he said.
“I know these are difficult jobs but the more we can do to encourage women to run for parliament, to be in public office, the better and we need to do more as a Liberal party.”
Opposition spokesperson Penny Shape said gender parity in parliament was paramount.
“It is disappointing that [the Liberal party is] not reaching the targets,” she said.
“Women make up half our population and should have an equal seat at the table when decisions are being made.”
ANU associate professor Tanya Jakimow said the differences between the three parties showed the power of affirmative action.
“It shows the value of affirmative action and the problems in the Liberal party by not having affirmative action or quotas,” she said.
Jakimow said there needed to be more focus on other forms of diversity including class and background.
“When we are looking at how many women we have, we have to look beyond just gender,” she said.
“Running for an election is expensive and that can make it so much more difficult for women, and that often intersects with class and ethnicity.”
Newtown MP and Greens women’s rights spokesperson Jenny Leong said the Liberals needed to do some “soul searching” and work out why they were unable to meet their own targets while calling on the major parties to do better at preselecting women and diverse candidates into winnable seats.
“We see that diverse candidates are preselected into marginal seats or completely unwinnable seats,” she said.
“It’s very clear when you see the makeup of the NSW lower house that it does not reflect the community. We need to increase the diversity in the chamber.”
There is a large contingent of women running as ‘teal’ candidates, including five Climate 200-endorsed candidates, Larissa Penn in Willoughby and Karen Freyer in Vaucluse.
