AUSTRALIA: A Quota Will Level the Playing Field for Liberal Women

Prime Minister Julia Gillard's ascendency deserves recognition for the historic moment that it is. Yet this new chapter for Australian women doesn't reflect the rest of their story in politics. Federally, concern is no longer about a lack of progression, but arresting a slide to regression. It is a very real possibility that after the next election, the number of women in the federal parliament may actually decline for the first time since Federation.

As a Liberal Party senator representing Victoria for 17 years and before that as a female country vice-president of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party, this is a trend I have witnessed with concern.

Australia can rightly pride itself on being an early achiever on the issue of equality for women. Yet while Australia became one of the first countries to give women the right to stand for election to parliament (alongside the right to vote) in 1902, it was among the last to finally get a woman elected in 1943, 41 years later.

The slow delivery of progress may be why Australian parliaments have not developed to levels reflective of the broader composition of our society. Britain and New Zealand have both elected female prime ministers, and the United States progressed to a woman (Hillary Clinton) making a competitive bid for the presidential nomination of her party.

Australia should have moved beyond the unique nature of parliamentary firsts and be accustomed to parallel representation.

I believe the introduction of a quota system to the parliamentary Liberal Party would help increase the number of Liberal women in the parliament to levels more reflective of the broader community.

The Liberal Party already has a 50 per cent quota on women in its organisational wing. To start, the Liberal Party could require that 40 per cent of women are preselected in seats for the federal election held after 2010/2011.

This could then be increased to 45 per cent within a period of five years after that election. The future candidates training forum could also become aligned with other internal structures by adopting the same internal 50 per cent quota of women participants. A similar program could be adopted for the state parliamentary team.

The customary defence against quotas is the "what about merit?" argument. If it's demeaning for women to have quotas, it's equally demeaning to sit in a Parliamentary party room for 20 years without seeing a progressive increase in the number of women members. As if those handful of women members who are there were the only "women of merit" who put themselves forward for preselection!

Among the 1421 candidates who nominated for the 2007 federal election (1054 for the House of Representatives and 367 Senate candidates), 407 were women. After the election, 26.7 per cent of members of the House of Representatives were women, with about 70 per cent of them sitting on the government benches. On the latest count (as at the July 1, 2008 intake), 35.5 per cent of senators are women. Contrary to Paul Keating's remark about unrepresentative swill, it would appear that the Senate is the chamber most representative of broader community demographics.

While the number of Liberal women elected to parliament rose between 1993 and 1996, the gears of change have since been left to rest idle. It is my view that change needs to be made at entry level – preselection and mentoring of prospective female candidates.

I believe this is important for two reasons. The first is that better policy outcomes are achieved with input and collaboration from women representatives. The second is that with more women members of parliament, there will be a greater cohort of prospective ministerial and leadership candidates coming through.

Unlike the ALP's Emily's List, I am not concerned about the specific ideological persuasion of prospective Liberal women candidates, other than embracing the same broad philosophical values and aspirations as espoused by the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party has always proudly reserved 50 per cent of positions within our internal structure for women.

They are the same equal conditions that Dame Elizabeth Couchman fought for and won in 1944, when she negotiated with Sir Robert Menzies for the Australian Women's National League to join the Liberal Party on the basis that there would be equal representation of men and women. The parliamentary wing is the only platform of the Liberal Party that does not embrace a quota system.

Getting women into parliament is not means to an end. Once elected, it's hoped they can progress further into additional roles of committee, party, portfolio and leadership responsibility. But getting more women into parliament is still an important achievement in and of itself.