A little over an hour after electing Peter Dutton as leader of the Liberal Party and Sussan Ley as deputy leader, the pair hosted a press conference at Parliament House — and quickly proved the party has learnt nothing, changed nothing and has no desire to be different.
There are more men named Andrew than female Liberals in the Senate, with the party also projected to have just seven women in the House of Representatives, down from 13. The National Party will also be fronted by a man, David Littleproud, with Perin Davey as deputy.
Ley is one of just 11 women across the Coalition’s 57 winning seats and was quick to assure journalists that, despite not being represented in the party, women’s issues would be heard.
“There are many women in leadership positions across the Parliament and every woman in our party … will be part of all of the policies and perspectives that will come in due course,” she said.
“While men speak on a variety of topics, they also speak for women so I’m very comfortable with the leadership of our party.”
Oh, good. Asking overconfident men to speak on issues they know nothing about has never, ever gone wrong before. They can always just defer to their wives, I guess.
But apparently Dutton isn’t one of those men who were appointed to mansplain — sorry, speak — for women. The opposition leader didn’t address a single question on gender, only mentioning women in relation to refugee victim-survivors given asylum in Australia. When asked about the party’s loss and gender, he focused on his support for those living in the suburbs — and when asked about gender representation and the rise of the Greens, he focused on Labor’s losses.
Lucky for him he had Ley to field those questions, jumping in to assure Australians that the Coalition had no idea why so many women had abandoned the party (hint: it was the underwhelming response to an alleged rape in Parliament, among many other failures).
“Sometimes women are presented as one homogenous group, which clearly they are not,” she said.
“To collect them in one group and say these things apply, these don’t, this went wrong, this didn’t, would be far too presumptuous.”
She continued by spruiking the party’s investment in women’s economic security instead of addressing the party’s failures, which is straight out of the Scott Morrison playbook.
Evidently, the party is starting out as it means to continue by ignoring and refusing to engage with women. Best of luck to them.
