David Speirs has shown that his leadership of the Liberal Party is simply too weak to take decisive action to address the Party’s woman problem.
The Liberals’ women’s taskforce has failed to deliver any solid recommendations to increase female representation, merely proposing a wishy-washy “aim” of 50 per cent representation by 2034.
This comes after the Liberal Party twice defied Speirs’ publicly stated wishes and chose men to fill vacancies instead of women.
Out of 36 elected positions across both houses of the South Australian Parliament the Labor Party has 17 women parliamentarians (47%), compared with the Liberal’s seven women across 24 positions (29%) with shockingly only two Liberal women out of 16 members (12.5%) in the Lower House. In contrast, Labor has more women than men in the Lower House.
The Labor Party has taken decisive action over decades to advance toward gender equality, with Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Katrine Hildyard, Deputy Premier Susan Close and many others progressing the cause of women in the Party over that time.
The Liberal Party has had two chances since July to increase the number of women amongst its parliamentary ranks, and at both times have opted for more men, with Jack Batty preselected for the Bragg By-election, and Ben Hood set to fill the Legislative Council vacancy.
Quotes
Attributable to Katrine Hildyard
There are roughly equal numbers of meritorious women and men. If your parliamentary ranks do not reflect this, it is clear that something is not working, and really decisive action must be taken.
I am proud that around a quarter of a century ago, the South Australian Labor Party took decisive action and introduced quotas.
In contrast, nearly a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century David Speirs says it’s time to drag his party into it.
David Speirs claims that quotas are in the too-hard-basket for the Liberal Party and backs his Party to preselect women ahead of the 2026 election. Without quotas this seems unlikely given the Party has at each point since he became leader, chosen men over women.
We have seen the effect of strong and decisive leadership regarding the representation of women within the Labor Party, where now more than half of all Labor MPs in the State’s lower house are women.
Having more elected Liberal women will not only make the Party stronger but will also strengthen the Parliament and make it more representative and reflective of wider society.
Accepting that it will take three election cycles before we potentially see an equal number of men and women MPs in the Liberal Party seems to speak to a lack of determination to advance toward gender equality.
