Liberals need to realise the time for gender equity is here

While Prime Minister Scott Morrison is in WA this week he should take some time to engage in the stories of Edith Cowan, Dorothy Tangney and Carmen Lawrence - all West Australians who have made history.  

WA proudly provided the first woman to serve in any Australian Parliament, the first woman Senator and the first woman to be Premier of any State or Territory.

WA also provided the first woman to be deputy leader of the Liberal Party and first woman to be foreign minister.

There is not much that unites myself and Scott Morrison.

I am a new WA Labor representative and he is a New South Wales Liberal who has been in Parliament more than a decade.

But we both served as Secretary of our respective political parties.

I served for three years as State Secretary of the WA branch of the Labor Party. Mr Morrison served for three years as State Director of the NSW branch of the Liberal Party.

Therefore, we both know a thing or two about selecting and electing candidates to Parliament.

This is why his response on electing more women to Parliament is so baffling.

Maybe it’s too idealistic, but a stronger Liberal Party delivers a stronger Labor Party and, ultimately, stronger democracy and policy outcomes.

In 2017, WA voters elected Mark McGowan in an historic win. The other part of history was that there is now the greatest ever number of women in the State Parliament.

Less than two years earlier Labor had enshrined in our rules a path to 50 per cent women in our held and winnable electorates.

This didn’t hurt our chances -  it made us stronger. Because when you have a powerful symbol at the top, it sends a strong message to every campaign manager, policy adviser and party member about the importance of equality.

It is worth remembering that on Labor’s journey to 50 per cent affirmative action began decades ago. Initially we had a system whereby 40 per cent of positions were reserved for women and 40 per cent of positions were reserved for men.

In other words, for every “quota girl” to use the Liberals’ own offensive language, there was a “quota boy”.

Maybe this would give comfort to the Liberal Party as they catch up to where their own public service and the corporate sector are heading.

Elizabeth Proust from the Australian Institute of Company Directors put it in blunt economic terms. When it comes to women on boards she said “It is not a supply problem. It is a demand problem.”

And the “demand problem” in the corporate world is an “internal problem” in the political world.

The Prime Minister is not ideologically opposed to quotas. Treasury, the department that Mr Morrison previously ran itself has a quota for Indigenous graduate recruits. Good.

Unfortunately, Treasury’s performance on meeting gender balance on Australian Government boards is less inspiring.

At Treasury, only 59 of 143 board members are women and of new appointments only 13 women were appointed to 32 vacancies in 2016-17.

While Treasury lags behind, it is miles ahead of where the Liberal Party finds itself in 2018.

Ultimately, it is the job of leaders to reform their parties.

When I worked for Kevin Rudd we radically democratized the Party giving members a vote in who should be leader.

And the Liberal Party’s founder Robert Menzies could not have done so without the support of the Australian Women's National League who were one of the founding membership bases of the Liberal Party.

The opportunity for the Prime Minister to take a page out of Labor’s book is clear.

The electoral clock is ticking on this challenge.

Julia Banks said that that targets do not work because they cannot be tied to incentives.

I disagree. There is one major incentive that should be on the Prime Minister’s mind.  And it isn't the next election.

It is the expectations of the Australian people in 2018 - and not just the 50.8 per cent who are women.