Election landslide prompts stark warning from WA Liberal women over ‘zero appeal’ to females

WA Liberal Party women have called on the state party to put strong female candidates in winnable seats and reflect modern society or condemn themselves to long-term opposition after successive electoral trouncings reduced it to a rump at both the state and federal level.

Some former female MPs want the party to go further and finally adopt quotas for women in parliament, arguing it has become completely mainstream.

“There’s not a mining company on the terrace that doesn’t have a policy on diversity targets,” one former senior female Liberal MP said.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve just had zero appeal to women.”

After the 2021 state election left the Liberals with just two lower house seats, the party lost five seats at the federal election on Saturday, leaving them with just one seat in metropolitan Perth.

Four of those outgoing MPs were men and all were replaced by women, three from the ALP.

Kate Chaney, who won the safe Liberal seat of Curtin, stood as an independent after deciding the Liberal Party, in which her uncle and grandfather were federal ministers, did not reflect her values.

The election disaster prompted senior WA Liberal and former Morrison cabinet minister Ken Wyatt, who lost the seat of Hasluck, to appeal to his party members for some serious soul searching and to stop being so “bloke centric”.