Most politicians are Men. That may have to do more with what women choose to do than misogyny.
It certainly has to do with party preselection and who the membership see as a good candidate.
The latest slur is about Ann Sudmalis and Lib member from the South Coast of NSW. Well maybe Ann isn't that good a member in the eyes of the membership. She only got the seat preselection due to her relationship with the last member Joanna Gash. In fact if ever there was a useless, dyed in the wool, whatever the party says member its Ann.
EXERPT
Jane’s apprentice won, but not through sorcery
The Australian
12:00AM May 17, 2018
Niki Savva
Coming as it did amid growing fears of a takeover of sections of the Liberal Party by the uglies, news that Jane Prentice had lost her preselection to a young man, a former staff member who had run her three successful campaigns in the Brisbane seat of Ryan, was enough to send her female colleagues feral.
And some male colleagues, too. Prentice, who has been involved in Liberal Party politics for 50 years, beginning in Mosman when she was 15, told me a few days later she was “very disappointed” by what happened. She was more philosophical than feral.
As someone who has experienced a few ups and downs over the decades and through her work as an assistant minister in the disability portfolio where she has met people who do have really serious stuff to complain about, Prentice maintained her perspective.
It’s politics.
Men and women involved in it have a choice. They can learn to cope with the losses (John Howard), or they go completely loopy (Mark Latham), or they blame others for their failure (Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott).
Prentice had references supporting her candidacy from Howard, Peter Dutton, Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Tim Fischer. Turnbull had made a pre-emptive intervention to Queensland Liberal National Party president Gary Spence.
Dutton attended the preselection as Turnbull’s representative and voted for Prentice. None of it could save her. She had offended people, the government through its superannuation changes in 2016 had offended people and she had unwisely given advance notice to a couple of branches she was planning to retire.
Her opponent, Julian Simmonds, tagged as cabinet material by those who know him, focused on one of the golden rules of politics. It’s all local. Simmonds had, depending on where you sit, either branch stacked or embarked on a recruiting drive. Prentice also had been prepared to back him as her successor when she retired. She wanted another term. He wasn’t prepared to wait.
Although his overwhelming victory had much to do with grassroots campaigning, and little or nothing to do with gender, that issue reverberates and will continue to so because the Liberal Party clearly does have a woman problem. To make up for the loss of Prentice, former state MP Lisa France was mentioned in dispatches as a possibility for Longman. As someone with strong local connections she would have been ideal, more than a match for Labor’s Susan Lamb, who does not deserve to be re-elected.
However since she lost her seat of Pumicestone in 2015, France has secured a well-paid career in the corporate world and is reluctant to return to politics. She sums up the problem faced by the Coalition in recruiting women: those who support the conservative side of politics tend to be in small business or the professions. It is difficult to persuade them to give up that life, disrupt their families and take a pay cut for the uncertainties of politics. However, given the government has made sure half the public service chiefs are women, and almost half are members of boards and authorities, it is clearly an organisational problem.
It requires an unremitting dedication to recruitment, which too often is missing. It’s enough to make you back measures to force the blokes to concentrate on finding capable women. Maybe once you’ve got them by the quotas, their hearts and minds will follow. And I say this as someone who has as much tolerance for women blaming misogyny for their failures as male politicians refusing to take responsibility for their decisions. That is, none.
The assault on the Liberal Party by members of the ultraconservative religious right who have realised membership of Family First or the Australian Conservatives under Cory Bernardi or other fringe parties will neither get them elected nor provide them with a power base to influence events is also an organisational problem.
