The repercussions from the scandal,revealed by theHerald in September, have emerged as the party wrestles with the preselection process for five seats less than 100 days from the state election.
Female candidates have repeatedly lost out in the preselections,despite a directive from the premier that the party must learn from its calamitous federal election loss by selecting more women.
Transport Minister David Elliott at the weekend accused the party of passing up quality female candidates in place of “blokes who would struggle to inspire me to get out of bed in the morning”.
Describing himself as “the most conservative man in the Liberal Party”,Elliott said he was “no feminist” but in a social media post on Saturday he lamented the Liberal Party’s record on preselecting women.
“So far,we’ve seen high calibre Ladies[sic] thrown under the bus by my party in South Coast,Pittwater,Davidson,Camden and now Riverstone,” he wrote. “At some stage we have to work out how to stop putting testosterone before talent.”
Perrottet on Sunday said there was not one party in the NSW parliament that had finalised its preselections. NSW Labor was yet to confirm all its candidates but leader Chris Minns on Sunday announced former Canberra Raiders captain Terry Campese would challenge for the Nationals seat of Monaro.