Speaker 1: From Shorts Media. I'm Ashlin McGee. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: Nine years ago the Liberal Party said it was aiming
Speaker 1: for gender parody by twenty twenty five. But since then
Speaker 1: the number of Liberal women in parliaments across the country
Speaker 1: has gone backwards and it's costing the party seats in
Speaker 1: the Federal Parliament, with professional women abandoning in droves, often
Speaker 1: in favor of the Till Independence. Now, with another election approaching,
Speaker 1: the Liberals have a fresh batch of candidates. They look
Speaker 1: like Tills, they talk like the Tills. But will it
Speaker 1: be enough to win back skeptical voters. Today the Saturday Papers,
Speaker 1: Jason katsukis on whether the Liberal Party's problem is its
Speaker 1: candidates or its brand. It's Thursday May thirty.
Speaker 2: Jason.
Speaker 1: We all remember that the Coalition lost a lot of
Speaker 1: ground to the so called Till Independence at the last election,
Speaker 1: and in the wake of that loss they did this
Speaker 1: big election review. What did it lay out about those losses.
Speaker 3: One of the main findings of that review, which was
Speaker 3: conducted by Jane Hume, who's of course a Victorian Liberal
Speaker 3: senator and Brian Locknane, the former Federal Director of the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party, was that professional women are deserting the Liberal Party,
Speaker 3: not just in the inner city, but in the top
Speaker 3: fifty House of Representative seats if you rank them according
Speaker 3: to the number of professional women voters. The Liberal Party
Speaker 3: now holds just ten of those top fifty seats. Before
Speaker 3: the last election, they held twenty five.
Speaker 4: Of course, co authored the report into the twenty twenty
Speaker 4: two election loss. How long is it going to take
Speaker 4: to turn this around, particularly when it comes to the
Speaker 4: issue of female representation in the party.
Speaker 5: Dinege, you're referring to the election review.
Speaker 3: The decline in support amongst professional women voters has been
Speaker 3: happening for a long time, and one of the key
Speaker 3: recommendations of the report was that to arrest that decline,
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party will have to find better candidates, perhaps
Speaker 3: more professional women candidates.
Speaker 5: And it's so important because we want to make sure
Speaker 5: that we are more reflective of the people for whom
Speaker 5: we wish to represent, for whom we wish to govern.
Speaker 6: And that's why, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I was talking with George megli Janis the other
Speaker 3: day who was saying to me, is the Liberal Party
Speaker 3: even viable in states like Victoria anymore? Because if you
Speaker 3: look at the results of the last few federal and
Speaker 3: state elections, then it does seem like the Liberal Party
Speaker 3: is in real trouble and they've been going backwards for
Speaker 3: quite some time.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like the.
Speaker 3: Problems that kept the Labor Party out of office through
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties and sixties, when the that the emergence
Speaker 3: of the Democratic Labor Party kind of blocked the federal
Speaker 3: aob from getting into government.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're seeing with the Teals.
Speaker 3: They're holding these seats that the Liberal Party needs to
Speaker 3: win if it's going to get back into government and
Speaker 3: government in its own right.
Speaker 1: And now that another elections looming, you've been looking at
Speaker 1: these three seats in particular that were won by the Teals.
Speaker 1: What makes these three seats so important?
Speaker 2: Why did you pick them so?
Speaker 3: The three seats we're talking about it in Melbourne Cuyon,
Speaker 3: which was Robert Menzie's seat, the founder of the modern
Speaker 3: Liberal Party. In Sydney the seat of Wentworth, which is
Speaker 3: of course Malcolm Turnbull's old seat, and then across the
Speaker 3: harbor the seat of North Sydney, another seat that has
Speaker 3: been in Liberal Party and for most of the Australian Federation.
Speaker 2: These are the Jewels in the Liberal Party crown.
Speaker 3: So all three of those seats are currently held by
Speaker 3: the so called Teal Independence. In North Sydney Kylie Tink
Speaker 3: in Wentworth, a legri spender, and then in Kuryong that
Speaker 3: seat is now held by Monic Ryan, who of course
Speaker 3: defeated Josh Friedenberg in that very high profile election contest
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two. So in those three seats, the
Speaker 3: Liberal Parties pre selected three very strong candidates to challenge
Speaker 3: those Teal independents. And if you read that Liberal Party
Speaker 3: report by Jamie Hume and Brian Locknane, these are exactly
Speaker 3: the kind of candidates that human Locknane hoped that the
Speaker 3: party could find. In North Sydney they've pre selected Giselle Captarian.
Speaker 3: She's a former humanitarian and trade lawyer who then went
Speaker 3: on to work for Julie Bishop when she.
Speaker 2: Was Foreign Minister.
Speaker 3: In Wentworth the party has pre selected Roe Knox, she's
Speaker 3: a former management consultant. And in Kuyong, the party's pre
Speaker 3: selected Amelia Hamer. That's a very famous name in Victorian
Speaker 3: Liberal Party circles. Her great uncle was Dick Hamer, the
Speaker 3: very progressive Liberal premier through the nineteen seventies and she
Speaker 3: is a lecturer in finance at Swinburn University and is
Speaker 3: a very very articulate candidate and just that kind of
Speaker 3: exactly that kind of young, professional woman that the Liberal
Speaker 3: Party has been searching for.
Speaker 1: So these pre selected Liberal candidates, they're all, you know,
Speaker 1: relatively high profile women who are now pitted against these
Speaker 1: till Independence But the Tier Independence. They didn't just win
Speaker 1: these seats because they're women, right, They won because voters
Speaker 1: in these electorates had real concerns on a policy level
Speaker 1: with what the Liberal Party was putting forward.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, one big reason that voters said that voted
Speaker 3: for the Teals was they didn't like Scott Morrison. So
Speaker 3: you would hear Liberal MPs who lost their seats would
Speaker 3: say your voters would come up to them and say, well,
Speaker 3: we love you, but we just can't vote for Scott Morrison.
Speaker 3: So that was one reason. But there were two other
Speaker 3: big reasons as well. One was the Liberal Party's stance
Speaker 3: on climate change, which many voters in those seats saw
Speaker 3: as being stuck in the last century. And then the
Speaker 3: other key issue for voters in those seats was integrity
Speaker 3: in politics and the failure of the Morrison government to
Speaker 3: set up a body that can review decisions and behavior
Speaker 3: of politicians and apply the sort of scrutiny that we've
Speaker 3: seen in all the states around Australia. And that body,
Speaker 3: of course is now a living and breathing thing, the
Speaker 3: National Anti Corruption Commission. So those two issues were very
Speaker 3: important for voters in the Teal seats and that the
Speaker 3: big question mark over the new candidates Liberal Party candidates
Speaker 3: is has the party moved on sufficiently to win back
Speaker 3: the trust of voters. I think as we get closer
Speaker 3: to the election, the pressure is really going to be,
Speaker 3: you know, amped up on these candidates and they're going
Speaker 3: to have to start talking about not just their own
Speaker 3: personal vision, but they're going to have to start defending
Speaker 3: the policies of Peter Dutton and the Federal Parliamentary Party.
Speaker 3: And I think that's going to be very difficult for
Speaker 3: them because you know, while Scott Morrison might be gone,
Speaker 3: Peter Dutton is not the kind of person that you
Speaker 3: would imagine the voters of kuy On, Wentworth and North
Speaker 3: Sydney are really warming too. He's very much not part
Speaker 3: of the Liberal Party establishment. Peter Dutton is kind of
Speaker 3: the anti establishment figure.
Speaker 1: After the break, meet the three women the Liberal parties
Speaker 1: bedding on to reclaim their heartland. So, Jason, you've been
Speaker 1: speaking to these three Liberal candidates who been pre selected
Speaker 1: to run in these electorates that are currently held by
Speaker 1: these two independents. Tell me a bit more about the
Speaker 1: Liberal candidates, who they are, what they've been telling you,
Speaker 1: maybe starting with Giselle Capterian.
Speaker 3: So one of the first things Jisel Captarian said to
Speaker 3: me was, you know, I'm a public school kid. You know,
Speaker 3: she grew up five hundred meters from where she's living now.
Speaker 3: Both her parents were migrants there of ar Median heritage.
Speaker 3: They moved to Australia in the early nineteen seventies and
Speaker 3: set up a small business which they're still running to
Speaker 3: this day. And she didn't go straight into Liberal Party
Speaker 3: politics at university. She went to mcquarie University got a
Speaker 3: law degree. As soon as Jiseel left university, she went
Speaker 3: off to Eritrea to work with the government there. After
Speaker 3: working in Eritrea, she moved to Geneva and started working
Speaker 3: with the World Trade Organization. And it wasn't until she
Speaker 3: was watching the then coalition's foreign Affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop
Speaker 3: being interviewed on television that she thought, Gee, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: mind trying to get a job with Julie Bishop.
Speaker 2: So she wrote to Julie Bishop.
Speaker 3: They said, we don't have a job for you right now,
Speaker 3: but maybe if we win the next election, get back
Speaker 3: in contact with us then and we'll see if we
Speaker 3: have a place for you. And of course that's exactly
Speaker 3: what happened, and she moved back from Geneva to Australia
Speaker 3: and started working here in Federal Parliament with Julie Bishop,
Speaker 3: who was one of Australia's most effective and respected foreign ministers.
Speaker 7: We're hearing it directly from businesses themselves about how the
Speaker 7: constably in crisis is actually making a pinch, and so
Speaker 7: what we are hearing over and over again is that
Speaker 7: they need representation that allows them to.
Speaker 1: So let's move across Sydney Harbor out of the seat
Speaker 1: of Wentworth. Tell me a bit more about Roeanox.
Speaker 3: Ronox is now living in Wentworth, in the heart of
Speaker 3: the eastern suburbs of Sydney, but she is from Melbourne,
Speaker 3: the Mornington Peninsula to be exact. She was the school
Speaker 3: captain at Turek College done in Madaalizer. She went to
Speaker 3: Ormond College at Melbourne University, was the chair of the
Speaker 3: student body. She joined Deloitte Consulting and she had a
Speaker 3: very long and successful career with Deloitte in New York
Speaker 3: and then in the early two thousands they decided to
Speaker 3: move back to Australia.
Speaker 2: They moved to Sydney.
Speaker 3: Roe's husband was the head of Credit Sweee in Australia
Speaker 3: and she decided that she would set up her own
Speaker 3: business in clothing retailing. And she's been deploying her entrepreneurial
Speaker 3: skills in Wentworth for the last twenty years and she's
Speaker 3: now fifty years old. You couldn't get a candidate more
Speaker 3: out of central casting when it comes to that area.
Speaker 3: You know, her husband's a banker, she's an entrepreneur. They're
Speaker 3: both very successful. I think, you know, really inculcated in
Speaker 3: the small kind of business values of the Liberal party.
Speaker 5: The country and Wentworth is really looking for strong leadership.
Speaker 5: And my view is Wentworth wants to get rid of
Speaker 5: this labor Albanese government and the only way we can
Speaker 5: do that is by electing a Liberal member for Wentworth.
Speaker 1: And what about in Melbourne in the seat of ku Yong.
Speaker 1: Tell me a bit more about Amelia Hamer Well Ashlynd.
Speaker 3: I mean, I am so old that I can remember
Speaker 3: when Dick Hamer was Premier of Victoria in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: and so it's a very famous name if you are
Speaker 3: a Melbournian of a certain age. Dick Hamer was kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, the last of the the small l liberal
Speaker 3: premiers that had kind of ruled Victoria for so long,
Speaker 3: and he's very much seen now as a very progressive politician.
Speaker 3: He introduced a lot of social reform during the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies and I think many Victorians have a lot of
Speaker 3: affection for Dick Hamer and the Hamer name. So here
Speaker 3: comes Amelia Hamer, his great niece. She's thirty one. She
Speaker 3: went straight from high school to Oxford University, where she
Speaker 3: studied philosophy, politics and economics. She stayed in London after graduation,
Speaker 3: got a job with a private equity firm. She worked
Speaker 3: in private equity and finance in the UK for about
Speaker 3: eight years and then came back to Australia and took
Speaker 3: up a position with I think with Air Wallas. The
Speaker 3: Australian finance startup and after the last election she decided
Speaker 3: that she wanted to put her hand up and try
Speaker 3: to win back the seat of Kuyom for the Liberal.
Speaker 6: Party to listen to the people with Kujong and particularly
Speaker 6: I'm hoping to provide a voice for younger Australians. So
Speaker 6: I'm in my thirties. We don't have a lot of
Speaker 6: politicians and we don't have a lot of politicians in
Speaker 6: a Liberal Party who are who are my age. And
Speaker 6: what I want to do is people in their twenties
Speaker 6: and people in their thirties in Cuyong and you know,
Speaker 6: in around Australia a sort of feeling like they're getting
Speaker 6: a bit of a raw deal.
Speaker 3: She has been described as a liberal moderate and listening
Speaker 3: to her and interviewing her, that's the box that I
Speaker 3: would put her in. But Amelia Haimer herself rejects that label.
Speaker 3: In fact, she said to me she hates being called
Speaker 3: a moderate and the reason why is that she feels
Speaker 3: that by being called a moderate it implies that she
Speaker 3: doesn't have a kind of a bold vision for reform.
Speaker 3: But she thinks that but yeah, that's not how she
Speaker 3: would describe herself. She's someone that really wants to get
Speaker 3: into Federal Parliament and try to affect meaningful change. But
Speaker 3: if she makes it into Federal Parliament, I think that
Speaker 3: label will stick to her.
Speaker 1: So Jason, it's one thing to pick these candidates that
Speaker 1: might stand out and you know, in some ways really
Speaker 1: match the independence that they're running against.
Speaker 2: But I wonder will that.
Speaker 1: Be enough to also counter all of those other issues
Speaker 1: that drove voters away from the Liberal Party in the
Speaker 1: first place. So she's like climate integrity, you know, the
Speaker 1: number of women in politics, for example, Is it enough.
Speaker 3: So things could easily go backwards with a Liberal Party
Speaker 3: at the next election. It's not a given that the
Speaker 3: pendulum will swing back their way. One of the people
Speaker 3: that I interviewed for this piece was Peter Lewis from
Speaker 3: the left leaning political consultancy Essential, and one of the
Speaker 3: things he said was that it wasn't as though the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party had bad candidates in these three seats at
Speaker 3: the last election.
Speaker 2: In Kuyong, had the.
Speaker 3: Then Federal Treasurer Josh Rodenberg, in Wentworth Dave Sharma who's
Speaker 3: now a Senator from New South Wales.
Speaker 2: And in North Sydney, Trent Zimmerman.
Speaker 3: All three of those people were seen as very solid candidates,
Speaker 3: very very talented politicians. So if it wasn't the candidates,
Speaker 3: then how did the Liberal Party lose those three seats?
Speaker 3: And in Peter Lewson's view, it's the Liberal Party brand
Speaker 3: and he hasn't seen Peter Dutton do enough to change
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party brand to be able to win back
Speaker 3: those three seats. I think on integrity and women in politics,
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party is making progress, but with climate change,
Speaker 3: it's not clear how the party has learned from the
Speaker 3: results of the twenty twenty two election, and certainly by
Speaker 3: advancing a policy like nuclear energy. I don't think that's
Speaker 3: going to be easy for voters in kujong Wentworth, North
Speaker 3: Sydney to warm Tube. It just seems as though that
Speaker 3: the party is going in the opposite direction there.
Speaker 2: So I think it's going to be a very.
Speaker 3: Difficult sell for Peter Dutton in those three seats.
Speaker 1: Jason, thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Today, Ashland. Always a pleasure talking with you. Thanks very much.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, News Corp Australia has begun
Speaker 1: a major restructure, with the first job losses announced yesterday.
Speaker 1: Lisa Mikexworthy, the editor in chief of news dot com
Speaker 1: dot Au, Australia's most popular news website, is among those
Speaker 1: being let go. It follows News Corps International chair and
Speaker 1: Lachlan Murdock and Key executive Rebecca Brooks, arriving in Sydney
Speaker 1: last week to oversee the restructure of the Australian Operation,
Speaker 1: and the head of the Office of National Intelligence, which
Speaker 1: is responsible for some of the most important intelligence reports
Speaker 1: that end up on the desk of our Prime ministers,
Speaker 1: said yesterday that he was proud of the work his
Speaker 1: organization had done on climate change as early as the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Andrew sheer Holds cened estimates the organization had
Speaker 1: first written an intelligence report on the threat of fossil
Speaker 1: fuels and the greenhouse effect in nineteen eighty one, but
Speaker 1: when asked if it was listened to by leaders at
Speaker 1: the time, he conceded, I can't comment on how our
Speaker 1: product is received. That's all from the team here at
Speaker 1: seven am today. Thanks for your company. We will see
Speaker 1: you again tomorrow.