Currently just under one in five Liberal MPs in the House – 9 out of 48 – is female and 40 per cent of the party’s senators – 11 out of 27 – are women.
A person familiar with the election review briefing,who asked not to be named so they could speak freely,told this masthead the review would stress the need for a “Liberal approach to improve the number of women in our ranks”.
“It’s recommending targets,not quotas.”
While Labor introduced quotas for female parliamentarians in the mid-1990s,the concept remains an anathema in the Liberal party,which has resisted the practice at state and federal levels.
The review of the 2022 election,announced in the days after the Coalition’s resounding May election defeat,was tasked with finding ways to bring women back into the party fold after the Liberals lost a raft of blue ribbon seats to Teal independents,all of whom were professional women and two of whom were close family of former Liberal ministers.
Key details of how the Liberals could recruit women without quotas – for example,how to reach a new generation of female supporters – have not been finalised.
The source compared the approach to a system introduced by the Conservative Party in the UK under the leadership of former British prime minister David Cameron,which has been backed by opposition frontbenchersAndrew Hastie and Simon Birmingham.