Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM.
Speaker 1: The Liberal Party knows it needs to change, but the
Speaker 1: battle over how is already tearing the party apart. Susan
Speaker 1: Lee has declared herself a zalot for getting more women
Speaker 1: into Parliament, but she faces stiff resistance from Angus Taylor,
Speaker 1: Tony Abbott and others who see quotas as undemocratic and
Speaker 1: an attack on the idea of merit. But gender imbalance
Speaker 1: is not the only problem they're facing. Unless the party
Speaker 1: finds a way to broaden its appeal, it will continue
Speaker 1: to suffer what Liberal insiders call a spiral or disaster
Speaker 1: that feeds on itself, and the end result, they fear,
Speaker 1: is an inability to ever win again. Today, National correspondent
Speaker 1: for the Saturday paper, Mike Second and why the Liberal
Speaker 1: Party can't agree on how to save itself. It's Monday, Mike.
Speaker 1: We know quoters are the philosophical equivalent of tript unite
Speaker 1: to many in the Liberal Party, even as they basically
Speaker 1: all know that they need to attract more female candidates.
Speaker 1: So what other ideas have they got to solve their
Speaker 1: issue with women?
Speaker 2: Well, there's an interesting one that's been around this past
Speaker 2: week or so from Julian Lisa, who's a longtime member
Speaker 2: and currently Shadow Attorney General, and he's been championing this
Speaker 2: for years, and that is that they would shift to
Speaker 2: primary elections.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: The New South Wales Liberal Party is considering adopting US
Speaker 3: style primaries when selecting its election candidates, the Daily Telegraph
Speaker 3: reporting this morning, members of the public will be able
Speaker 3: to vote on who should represent the major party under
Speaker 3: a proposal.
Speaker 2: Much like the Democrats and the Republicans have in the States,
Speaker 2: and they have in certain areas of Britain, whereby a
Speaker 2: candidate selection wouldn't be a matter for members of the
Speaker 2: party but could be thrown open to the broader community.
Speaker 2: His model, and he's open to refining it. Under his idea,
Speaker 2: the party would put up a sort of list of
Speaker 2: a roster of candidates, and then the citizen who would
Speaker 2: gather in a school hall or somewhere and people would
Speaker 2: get to vote on who should be the candidate.
Speaker 4: People who are not party members but who wanted to
Speaker 4: participate in choosing their Liberal candidate could also play play
Speaker 4: a role and select their candidate. What this would mean
Speaker 4: is that people are not being selected behind closed doors anymore.
Speaker 2: So it would broaden the demographics of those making the
Speaker 2: candidates selection, and the hope would be, of course, that
Speaker 2: that would make the candidates more palatable to the broader electric.
Speaker 1: And what if people inside the party said to you
Speaker 1: about whether primaries could work.
Speaker 2: Look, they've raised very real concerns, logistical as much as anything.
Speaker 2: Primaries are an expensive thing to run, for a start,
Speaker 2: so there would be cost involved. The other thing is
Speaker 2: they worry about people turning up to vote in a
Speaker 2: primary who actually don't have the best interests of the
Speaker 2: Liberal Party at art, and therefore might stack the case
Speaker 2: for the candidate they perceive to be the weakest. There's
Speaker 2: also the question about, you know, as we've seen in America,
Speaker 2: you know, big money coming in behind one or another
Speaker 2: candidate on behalf of vested interests. So there's some real
Speaker 2: logistical issues to be resolved. And then of course there's
Speaker 2: also ideological ones, you know, which is it dilutes the
Speaker 2: say of the rank and file who pay their membership
Speaker 2: and turn up to meetings, Well, why is their voting
Speaker 2: power suddenly diluted? You would have to think that a
Speaker 2: lot of them would resent that, as would a number
Speaker 2: of incumbent candidates, I would.
Speaker 1: Think, so, how does it currently work.
Speaker 2: Well, it varies a bit by state, but essentially, you know,
Speaker 2: there are two means of selection. It's either done by
Speaker 2: the rank and file of the branch, the grassroots membership,
Speaker 2: or by the party organization, or by some combination of
Speaker 2: those two. You know, in either case it's a small
Speaker 2: group of people making the call as to who the
Speaker 2: candidate would be. The problem here is, of course, that
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party is not a unitary thing. It's a
Speaker 2: federated structure, meaning each state jurisdiction is sovereign and it
Speaker 2: has its own constitution. So in order to make a change,
Speaker 2: whether for quotas or for the primaries, you would have
Speaker 2: to persuade each of these states and territories to change,
Speaker 2: you know, And as one senior moderate from New South
Speaker 2: Wales put it to me, that might be less difficult
Speaker 2: in his state, for example, which is, you know, as
Speaker 2: he described it, more mainstream than some of the others.
Speaker 2: Even then it's unlikely, you know, a fifty percent quota
Speaker 2: would get up, but maybe something smaller would in his view.
Speaker 2: But you know, he pointed to the example of South Australia,
Speaker 2: which he put it has been overrun by religious conservatives.
Speaker 2: So you can see that this federated structure makes it
Speaker 2: very logistically difficult to make change. You know, you can't
Speaker 2: just say from the top down where this is how
Speaker 2: it's going to work. And I suspect that this is
Speaker 2: why Susan Lee has walked a bit carefully on this,
Speaker 2: you know, called herself agnostic on the matter of quotas.
Speaker 5: Now, I'm agnostic on specific methods to make it happen,
Speaker 5: but I am a zealot that it actually does happen.
Speaker 5: Current approaches have clearly not worked, so I'm open to
Speaker 5: any approach that will.
Speaker 2: I suspect that she would really like to change the
Speaker 2: system such that we do have quotas, But she, as
Speaker 2: many others, realize that there's really not a great deal
Speaker 2: of chance getting it up.
Speaker 5: As the first woman leader of our federal party, let
Speaker 5: me send the clearest possible message. We need to do better,
Speaker 5: recruit better, retain better, and support better.
Speaker 1: After the break a corolla full of women, Mike tell
Speaker 1: me about the Liberal Party membership as it is now.
Speaker 1: Who makes its ranks.
Speaker 2: Well, mostly old white guys. That's not my description. That
Speaker 2: comes from a source who actually said, male, pale and stale,
Speaker 2: he said, and he went under his site some stats.
Speaker 2: According to him, the average branch member in New South
Speaker 2: Wales is now more than seventy years old I think
Speaker 2: he said seventy two, but getting up there anyway, well
Speaker 2: beyond normal retirement age and male. Someone from the Victorian
Speaker 2: branch told me it's broadly the same demographic there and
Speaker 2: there's no reason to assume that it would be different
Speaker 2: in any other states. So yeah, essentially old white guys
Speaker 2: making the calls. And of course the voters that the
Speaker 2: party needs to attract obviously are about half that age
Speaker 2: and female. So there's a problem here, you know. The
Speaker 2: problem is that the branch rank and file is inclined
Speaker 2: to select candidates attitudinally similar to them, and Australia has
Speaker 2: moved on. Ten years ago there was a report commissioned
Speaker 2: by the National Executive at the party which recommended a
Speaker 2: target of fifty percent women candidates by twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: which of course now is well. In the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five election for the House of Representatives, twenty nine Liberals
Speaker 2: were elected. Only six of them were women, so that's
Speaker 2: about twenty percent. As Annabel Krab from the ABC rote
Speaker 2: in a piece assuming that the new leader Susan Lee
Speaker 2: gets a com car to go to Parliament House, the
Speaker 2: rest of the female representation could fit in a to
Speaker 2: out a corolla and drive themselves there.
Speaker 1: That's such a good line.
Speaker 2: It's a great line, isn't it And so evocative of
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 1: And so when it comes to the demographics and to
Speaker 1: quotas which Labor introduced decades ago, and they're proving to
Speaker 1: be successful, measuring by how many women are in the
Speaker 1: party at the moment. When it comes to liberals, who
Speaker 1: inside the party is stopping them from just getting on
Speaker 1: with introducing quotas.
Speaker 2: Well, it's basically the conservatives.
Speaker 1: Well a guy don't believe in quotas.
Speaker 5: I don't think I believe in quotas for anything.
Speaker 4: I just think you have to make judgments about individuals.
Speaker 1: We do need to get more capable women into the
Speaker 1: post how about quotas.
Speaker 4: Look, I'm very much opposed to quotas.
Speaker 2: Still the most recent example of course Angus Taylor, the
Speaker 2: most senior of the New South Wales right wing members, and.
Speaker 6: I'm never a believer in subverting democratic processes with quotas.
Speaker 6: There's other ways I've found through the course of my
Speaker 6: professional career through mentoring in particular attraction and recruitment processes,
Speaker 6: retention processes as well.
Speaker 2: Essentially said that it would subvert party democracy, which is
Speaker 2: a pretty big call frankly, you know, as though quotas
Speaker 2: and competent representation are somehow mutually exclusive. You know, various
Speaker 2: reviews over the years have sought to spell out a
Speaker 2: path forward by bringing more women into the party, and
Speaker 2: the right always resists. Not only the right, though, I
Speaker 2: would suggest there's a big incumbency factor here, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're a male seat warmer sitting in the Parliament,
Speaker 2: possibly contribut bitting possibly not the thought that women might
Speaker 2: get a bit of a leg up, just on the
Speaker 2: basis that their women would be anathema to you and
Speaker 2: you would see it as a threat to your cozy existence.
Speaker 1: Is there hope, Mike, that the various reviews could spell
Speaker 1: out a path forward or revive the idea of quotas
Speaker 1: in a way that makes it easier for Susan Lee
Speaker 1: to push ahead with them despite such significant opposition.
Speaker 2: I would like to offer hope. I mean, it's been
Speaker 2: raised so many times and has never gone anywhere. You know,
Speaker 2: there's at least two, arguably three of reviews going on
Speaker 2: at the moment, and they will probably show some useful
Speaker 2: things for the party. Like you know, it was a
Speaker 2: mistake to target Anglo tradees in the outer suburbs when
Speaker 2: what they should have been targeting was highly educated female
Speaker 2: professional people in the metro areas. But as to how
Speaker 2: they're going to do that, and as to how they're
Speaker 2: going to get the candidates, particularly the female candidates they
Speaker 2: need to do it, I don't hold out a lot
Speaker 2: of hope. Frankly.
Speaker 1: Beyond representation, what have we seen from the Liberals when
Speaker 1: it comes to attempts to develop policies that appealed to
Speaker 1: a broader base.
Speaker 2: Well, this is an interesting thing too. I mean, if
Speaker 2: we look at the last election, for example, it used
Speaker 2: to be the case that the Liberals enjoyed a big
Speaker 2: advantage over labor when it came to economic management. Well,
Speaker 2: if you look at the published polls from the last election,
Speaker 2: wasn't the case anymore. In the case of the cost
Speaker 2: of living, you know, the economic issue that was most
Speaker 2: resonant for most voters, it was pretty much a dead heat.
Speaker 2: But you know, in terms of what the voters preferred.
Speaker 2: So you know, if that's a dead heat, you've got
Speaker 2: to start looking at other policy areas. So what did
Speaker 2: we have We had We had a very flaky policy
Speaker 2: on nuclear We had a policy on climate change, which
Speaker 2: is important to younger voters, which was woefully inadequate. They
Speaker 2: were behind on education, on health, on childcare, on all
Speaker 2: those issues that concern younger voters and women. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's not just a matter of candidate selection, it's a
Speaker 2: matter of policy selection. It's a matter of campaigning in
Speaker 2: the areas where they need to pick up the votes.
Speaker 2: And so far they seem to be, you know, doing
Speaker 2: it wrong on all of those things.
Speaker 1: And if the Liberal Party fails to modernize, fails to
Speaker 1: iron out all these deep fundamental problems they have within themselves,
Speaker 1: what happens if they perish? What happens to Australian democracy.
Speaker 2: Well, it would obviously be a bad thing for democracy,
Speaker 2: I would argue. I mean, for democracy to function, you
Speaker 2: need a government and you need a viable opposition to
Speaker 2: test you know what the government is advancing in the parliament.
Speaker 2: So it would be it would be a bad thing.
Speaker 2: But I doubt that there would be a vacuum frankly,
Speaker 2: I mean we've seen this on the conservative side of politics.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Liberal Party itself grew out of the
Speaker 2: failure of the previous Conservative United Australia Party. So particularly
Speaker 2: on the conservative side of politics, this happens periodically. You know,
Speaker 2: they arise, they do well, they die and they are
Speaker 2: replaced by something better.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: At the moment, we have suggestions out there, for example,
Speaker 2: that the Teel candidates who've knocked off a bunch of
Speaker 2: Liberals in their most you know, blue ribbon seats, that
Speaker 2: they could form an alternative party that would present a
Speaker 2: vision of what liberalism is to be, which is economically dry,
Speaker 2: socially progressive.
Speaker 1: As the great philosopher Eddie Vedder once said, its evolution, baby.
Speaker 1: Thanks for match this. Also in the news, the Trump
Speaker 1: administration's review of the Orcust Defense Pact, which was expected
Speaker 1: to be published over the weekend, is incomplete. The American
Speaker 1: review is being led by Senior peddicant On official Albert Colby,
Speaker 1: who has made Commons skeptical of the defense arrangement in
Speaker 1: the past. But despite that, Australia's Acting Defense Minister Patrick
Speaker 1: Conroy says he is confident that the US will continue
Speaker 1: to support the deal, which includes Australia receiving three to
Speaker 1: FIVET Virginia class nuclear powered submarines and Brina Minster. Anthony
Speaker 1: Albanezi will meet with President Jijing King this week as
Speaker 1: part of his six day visit to China. China is
Speaker 1: Australia's largest trading partner and trade is expected to dominate
Speaker 1: the agenda. The visit comes in the wake of the
Speaker 1: government's decision to step up screening of Chinese investment and
Speaker 1: critical minerals. Tomorrow and seven AM we'll have a full
Speaker 1: report on how China took over the global critical mineral
Speaker 1: supply chain and what that means for Australia's future. Daniel
Speaker 1: James is the seven AM see that