No one has an entitlement to sit in parliament. Those that do have to work for it. Most of them work very hard at it; they join branches, work their way up, create networks, wait for opportunities, contest pre-selections and maybe, just maybe, make into parliament.
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Pre-selections, Liberal ones anyway, are democratic – all 150 of them across Australia. Normally 200 people of mixed sexes listen to the candidates and vote. They want to pick a winner and, if it is a safer seat, a future minister or leader. They tend to vote their conscience.
Would a self-respecting woman want a competitive job just because she is a woman?
Liberal Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells said she does not support quotas. “I would not want to sit in parliament knowing I had only been selected to help make up the numbers,” she said.
Senator Linda Reynolds said she is not an advocate of quotas. They ‘demand women receive special treatment, simply because we are women.’
Labor has more women in Parliament than the Liberals but there may be reasons for this. Many of them have backgrounds in trade unions and organisations that are nurseries for developing political skills.
An involvement in organisational or political structures gives Labor a pool of women who are equipped to compete for political office. No one gets to be boss of the ACTU or a trade union without having developed serious political skills.
At an organisational level Labor operates with more disciplined factional structures and electorates are divided among the factions who determine who the candidates will be. In these circumstances it is easier to promote women if achieving quotas is the objective.
The recent Wentworth pre-selection demonstrates the reality Liberal women face in an open, merit based, democratic process. Despite the Prime Minister’s preference for a woman the three first three candidates to be eliminated were the three women.
The argument will go on and on, but the conservative view would be that targets are to be preferred over quotas. Targets are a bottom up approach that encourage change through motivation; they are democratic. Quotas are a top down response enforcing ideological outcomes; they distort the democratic process.
What should be important is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. There should be no barriers to women participating; they should be encouraged. After that merit should determine who sits in our parliament.
Stephen Lusher,
Former Member for Hume
