3 Male Candidates Dropped as State Leader Intervenes to Secure Gender Parity for State Election

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet speaks to the media during a press conference at the State Emergency Operations Centre in Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney, Australia, on Nov. 15, 2022. AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet has intervened to get three Liberal Party women into the state’s upper house by dropping three male MPs to guarantee equal numbers of both gender on the ticket for the state election in March 2023.

After what appears like a deal brokered between party factions on Dec. 22, sitting upper house MP, Families and Communities Minister Natasha Maclaren-Jones will lead the ticket with Liberal state executive member, lawyer Susan Carter, and former schoolteacher Jean Haynes, all three given winnable seats.

Backbenchers Shayne Mallard, Lou Amato, and one-time Legislative Council President Matthew Mason-Cox will be sacrificed for gender parity under the plan.

The Party initially put six male candidates to run for the upper house until factions came together to make a change.

Treasurer, Matt Kean speaks during a press conference in Randwick in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 18, 2021. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Treasurer Matt Kean, leader of the moderate faction in the Liberal Party, said the factions had worked together to reach an agreement to increase the number of female Liberal policymakers in Parliament.

“This is a great outcome for women and the stability of the Liberal Party to ensure we win in March. This is gender parity on the upper house ticket,” Kean said.

Finance minister and right faction leader Damien Tudehope also welcomed Perrottet’s choice.

“All wings of the different party groups came together to agree on what is a tremendous outcome for the party and will enable us to be best placed to win the election,” he said.

Despite support from Tudehope, some members of the Party’s right faction were angered by the change.

“This is happening because they don’t want to go to preselection because they won’t be able to get the outcomes they want,” one MP told The Australian newspaper anonymously.

“The moderates have had opportunities to put women in safe seats, but they’ve continually run males—it happened in Davidson, it happened in Ryde, it happened in Pittwater, it happened on the south coast.

“But they chose to go with males and now they’re saying, ‘Oh, this is outrageous, we need more women running.’”

The drastic move is seen as a response to a recent review finding that women aged 18 to 55 preferred the centre-left Labor Party, as well as a way for the Liberals to deal with competition from the “teal” independents, who managed to sweep the party from several safe electorates it had held for decades.

Paul Fletcher, Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts speaks at the Museum of Contemporary Art prior to the Cathy Freeman projection event on September 25, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Federal Liberal MP and Manager of Opposition Business Paul Fletcher said the party did have to conduct an “honest assessment of what went wrong” to see what improvement is needed.

“We do need more women candidates. No question of that, absolutely no question of that, so we’ve got work to do,” he told Sky News Australia.

Coincidentally, the Liberal state government has just committed to tripling the number of female construction workers to supposedly dismantle gender norms and move towards equality.

“This grant program will support industry-led initiatives to break down the barriers stopping women from considering a career in construction,” said Treasurer Matt Kean in a statement announcing that $10 million (US$6.7 million) will be allocated towards reaching a target of 15 percent of women on work sites by 2030.