Taylor Against Gender Quotas, Says Female Candidates Need To Win Over The Liberal Party’s Rapidly Shrinking Base Of Cranky Old Men Whose Brains Are Fucked From Sky News

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

HAVE MORE MERIT: The Liberal Party remains torn over the proposal to introduce gender quotas into the selection processes for both candidates shadow cabinet members.

These discussions around gender representation have been roadblocked within the Coalition for close to thirty years, as the Labor Party shot ahead of the Liberals in female representation after installing quotas at the 1994 ALP National Conference.

Three decades later, it seems that Labor’s affirmative action has been a success. Women now easily outnumber men in both the senate (63%) and the House of Representatives (54%).

These numbers terrify the Liberal Party’s membership base, who view Labor’s successes in gender equality as a radical overcorrection that could destroy democracy as we know it.

But it’s clear that something needs to change. The Liberal Party now has just six women among its 28 MPs

After a devastating 2025 Election result, that saw millions of female voters ditch the Liberals due to their very clear ‘woman problem’ – the party’s already damaged brand is very close to becoming terminal.

Even after reluctantly electing Sussan Ley as their first female leader, the party still cannot agree on whether or not they need to enforce mandatory quotes for female MPs and senators.

Ley says she’s ‘undecided’ and recognises that this kind of proposal goes against the very fibre of the Liberal Party, which is supposed to be a ‘meritocracy’.

Unfortunately for the women in the party, it’s very difficult for female candidates to prove their merit to a party branch room full of old men.

The man who wanted Sussan Ley’s job, Angus Taylor says he opposes quotas – and it’s clear that he will bin the idea the moment he final has the numbers to replace her as Leader of the Opposition.

Taylor admits it is important to attract more women to the Liberal Party, but remains opposed to quotas, and believes female candidates should be pre-selecting democratically by the party’s shrinking membership base of hyper-religious an cranky old men whose brains have been fucked by the culture wars they have been mainlining ever since Sky News became available on free-to-air television in 2018.