PRIME MINISTER

15 August 2015

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER

THE HON. TONY ABBOTT MP
ADDRESS TO FEDERAL WOMENS COMMITTEE LUNCHEON,
ADELAIDE
E&OE.
It is terrific to be here to help celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Federal Womens Committee and to
honour the work of women in our Party.
That tradition began more than 70 years ago when Sir Robert Menzies sought to unify the conservative side
of politics.
The Australian Womens National League was one of the strongest of the groups that Menzies summoned to
discuss the formation of our Party.
In return for joining the new Liberal Party, League President Dame Elizabeth Couchman insisted on the
equal representation of men and women in senior party positions, at least in the Victorian division.
This was the first occasion that a quota was established for female political representation anywhere in
Australia and it happened in the Liberal Party and under our founder.
It entrenched the place of women in the structures of our Party and provided a springboard for some to enter
parliament.
The first woman ever to be elected to an Australian parliament represented the conservative side of politics;
the first women to be elected to parliament in most states and in the House of Representatives were Liberals;
and Liberal women were the first to achieve ministerial rank at state and national level.
Women like Enid Lyons, Annabelle Rankin, Ivy Wedgwood, Marie Breen and Margaret Guilfoyle were
trailblazers for our country and for our Party.
In more recent times, people like Margaret Reid, Kathy Sullivan and Julie Bishop, my deputy, have added to
the litany of firsts for Liberal women.
Menzies declaration, back in 1944, that men and women will, side by side, be members of this
organisation, reflected his aspiration to create a party that was beholden to no one and open to everyone.
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Menzies was ahead of his time when it came to female participation and representation.
He understood that if the Liberal Party was to become the party of aspiration then it had to be the party of
aspiration for all.
Ever since, we have tried to be the party that embodied peoples hopes for a better life and confidence in
their own capacities to achieve it.
Ever since, Liberals have believed in an Australia thats better tomorrow than it is today.
I am proud to lead a party thats not a collection of union officials but of Australians from all walks of life
who want to have a go.
Were the party of Dame Enid Lyons the first woman to enter the ministry.
Were the party of Neville Bonner and Ken Wyatt the first indigenous people to take their places in the
Senate and the House of Representatives.
Were the party of teachers and nurses and police officers; of soldiers and farmers and business people.
In our party, you dont have to serve your time as an office bearer in order to enter parliament; our party
prides itself on choosing the best and the most electable candidate for every seat, and not just taking the
factions pick.
Its precisely because merit should be all that matters, that I ask myself: why isnt our party selecting more
women members of parliament?
Why isnt our party, as relatively advanced on this today as we were 70 years ago?
Why havent we remained ahead of our time in promoting women; and is that one of the reasons why we no
longer attract the majority of women voters?
On this anniversary, we owe it to ourselves and to those who have gone before us to pose this question.
As many of you know, I grew up in a household of strong women.
My mother went to university and entered a profession at a time when that was not common for women.
At the family dinner table, I had to hold my own with three strong-willed and opinionated sisters.
You often hear one of my opinionated sisters right now.
I live in a household of strong women who were raised and educated to believe that there should be no
artificial barriers to their achievement.
I work with strong women who help to keep me aware of the ways that women can still be made to feel
like outsiders.
Our party must always be a welcoming forum for women to argue their case, to win on their merits and to
realise their ambitions because theyre very good at their job.
Yet there is consistently low female representation across our party.

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There are relatively few women in leadership positions in the lay party; there are relatively few women in
the parliament; and because there are relatively few women in the parliament its harder to get more women
into the cabinet.
Regrettably, the percentage of Liberal women in both chambers has plateaued since John Howard came into
office.
In the national parliament, women hold one in five of our seats in the House of Representatives and about
one in six in the Senate; or to put it the other way, men hold four in every five of the House seats and five in
every six of our Senate seats.
Its hard to believe that politically-committed and meritorious conservative men outnumber like-minded
women by at least four to one.
Naturally, I do acknowledge differences between men and women but when it comes to political
aspiration, were just not that unlike.
Equally with men, women are interested in jobs, growth and community safety.
Equally with men, women aspire to be all they can be.
And equally with men, women have at least as much faith in their own judgment and capacity than in the
benevolence and omniscience of officials.
I love this Party, as you do, and I want it to be the very best it can be; and that has to include a determination
to give a fair go to politically interested and able women.
If even the Australian Army can become less blokey, then so must we.
If the leaders of Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank, Woolworths, Rio Tinto, and Goldman Sachs can be
male champions of change, so must the men of the Liberal Party.
To be serious about winning elections, we must be more serious about engaging, pre-selecting, and sending
to parliament the representatives of 50 per cent of the electorate.
Today, the Menzies Research Centre is releasing its report, Gender and Politics, pointing out that the lack of
female representation is reducing our capacity to reach voters.
Its a statement of the obvious but it needed to be said and it now needs to be addressed.
As it happens, governments often hold themselves to account by setting targets.
For instance, this government has a target to create a million jobs within five years and, two years on, I can
report that we are on track to meet that target.
We have a target to cut a billion dollars a year every year from red tape costs and were meeting that target
and helping our countrys small businesses along the way.
We have a target to return the Budget to a strong surplus within a decade and were on track for that target
too.
We have a target of zero boats and weve met that over the past year.

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We have emissions targets that weve more-than-met to date and this week, we announced further targets
for 2030.
And we have targets for public servants and for directors of government boards in order to make
government more representative of the people it serves.
So it would be entirely reasonable for our party to have not a quota but a target to increase the number of
women in the parliament and in our government at every opportunity.
Of course, the right representation at any time depends upon the choices available.
Of course, its up to every pre-selection panel to choose the best candidate regardless of gender.
But if we dont get the percentage of women up, we will be letting ourselves down.
At every election, at every reshuffle, we should aim for a higher percentage of women than before.
Right now, federal Vice President Rosemary Craddock is preparing a report to the Federal Executive on
making our party more representative.
I have asked Senators Cash, in her capacity as minister assisiting me for women, and Reynolds, as a former
Assistant National Director of the Party, to support this report by ensuring that the views of all our female
members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are included.
As a member of the Federal Executive myself, I hope that the report will canvas specific steps to lift our
female parliamentary representation and propose specific targets and goals for the years ahead.
If we lift our female representation, we should improve our overall representation and maximise our longer
term chances of consistently winning elections and holding government.
We need to have a platitude-free conversation inside our party about how we can make more of ourselves by
making more of those women who are natural Liberals.
Every one of us needs to be alert to encouraging smart, liberal conservative women to consider a future in
public life.
This is not abandoning our history but being true to it.
After all, it was Menzies himself, who said that we stand for the forgotten people and it was Howard who
said that we stand for all of us.
We stand for the women who start their own businesses and we should want them to stand for us.
We stand for the mums who seek a better future for their families and we should want them to stand for us.
We stand for all the women who work hard, pay taxes, volunteer in our communities and save for their
retirement.
We stand for them; we stand with them; and we should want more of them to stand as our representatives
for our partys sake and for our countrys.
Seventy years ago, the federal Womens Council was founded largely thanks to the tenacity of Dame
Elizabeth Couchman.
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Dame Elizabeth never made it to the Senate despite Menzies observation that she would have been the
best cabinet minister I could have wished for.
Her legacy, though, has been to ensure that the women who followed her had a stronger voice in our party
and more opportunity to pursue the political career that she was denied.
So today, we recommit to that legacy and to making this great Party of ours the very best that it can be.
[ends]

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