One of the NSW government's most senior ministers has sent a clear message to his party: Fix your unconscious bias against women.
Transport Minister David Elliott has come out swinging against the Liberal Party for pre-selecting men who he believes are underqualified in place of talented women for the March 2023 election.
Meanwhile, Premier Dominic Perrottet has thrown his support behind US primary-style pre-selections for the NSW Liberal Party to give voters more involvement in the process.
It comes after Mr Elliott's chief of staff and Parramatta hopeful Tanya Raffoul went public about comments she received from party members advising her to "settle down and have children" instead of running for parliament.
"I have been told that it's best for me to go and settle down and have children and then think about a political career as I won't have time to do that in parliament," she told the ABC.
She said one Liberal minister told her she was "too assertive" for parliament and rival faction members called her "too opinionated".
Formal pre-selection is yet to begin for the seat of Parramatta but already Ms Raffoul says she has been urged "quite aggressively" to withdraw.
Mr Elliott said the comments were "completely inappropriate" and highlighted the bias against women among Liberal rank-and-file members.
"Tania is a pretty tough woman so anybody that makes these comments to her is very brave," he said.
He urged the party's executive to move with the times.
"Just go without any bias. It's 2022," he said.
"We've got to make sure it's very, very clear to women that they have a serious role in the political process. We've seen it with [former NSW premier] Gladys Berejiklian and we've seen it with [former prime minister] Julia Gillard.
"It just doesn’t make sense when you have two resumes [and] one candidate is so much more qualified than the other, and in my mind the wrong decisions have been made."
The pre-selection process has so far seen the Liberal Party renege on the premier's promise for greater gender and cultural diversity in his government.
Overall, women make up 29 per cent of Liberal representation in both houses of parliament.
Last month's decision by the party not to pre-select the most senior woman in the Liberal Party, Natalie Ward, for the seat of Davidson came as a shock to the government.
Treasurer Matt Kean said it showed something was seriously wrong with the party's internal processes and systems, and he urged branch members to "get on board with the program".
Other women who have missed out on pre-selection for the 2023 election include Hills Shire councillor Reena Jethi (for Riverstone), Nowra businesswoman Jemma Tribe (for South Coast) and Camden councillor Lara Symkowiak (for Camden).
In April, the premier said he wanted to put the power back in non-financial Liberal members' hands, and today he told The Daily Telegraph his party should be open to adopting a system similar to the US primaries to pre-select candidates.
He said that would give Liberal voters who do not have time to be involved in the party a chance to still be engaged with who is representing them.
The review into the Liberals' loss at this year's federal election is expected to recommend the party increase the number of females in its ranks.
This morning Mr Kean said "enough has been written" about the inner workings of the Liberal Party, but he condemned the comments directed towards Ms Raffoul.
"Those comments, if they were said, are absolutely disgraceful," he said.
"They should have no place in the Liberal Party or any other organisation for that matter.
"They should be repudiated in the strongest terms."
Over the weekend, Mr Elliott took to Facebook to fire more shots at his own party.
The self-proclaimed "most conservative man" in the party said the Liberal executive needed to work out how to "stop putting testosterone before talent".
