As senior leaders push back against talk of interventions and gender quotas, others in the party call assistant minister’s ousting ‘a bloody disgrace’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Jane Prentice was always going to hand over to Julian Simmonds. That was the deal.

The only question was when.

But Prentice’s decision to stay on to fight for another term, leading to what amounted to a hostile branch takeover by her former staffer, has cracked open barely glued-over fissures in the way the Liberal party goes about addressing its immense gender gap.

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Prentice, who in 2010 won preselection for the blue-ribbon seat of Ryan in Brisbane’s western suburbs, had agreed to pass on the seat to her campaign manager, Simmonds. Under their deal he expected her to step down at the 2016 election.

Those who support Prentice, an assistant minister in the Turnbull government, say she had another term before the deal came into play. Those in the Simmonds camp say he had “already been patient” and Prentice “kept moving the fenceposts”.



Since the 2016 election Simmonds has been working to build support. On Saturday 350 members of the 700-member branch arrived for the preselection vote, including Peter Dutton as Malcolm Turnbull’s representative and Keith Pitt as Michael McCormack’s man.

Simmonds won the vote 256 to 103 – the biggest preselection vote in Brisbane’s history.

Jane Prentice loses LNP preselection for Queensland seat of Ryan Read more

Prentice was forced out and the spotlight turned to the optics of one of the few senior women in the Liberal party being dumped to make way for a man.

“It’s been badly handled on all sides but she was always making way for a man. Always,” one LNP source said.

“It was just a question of when. And now, we’re talking about interventions and gender quotas, when everyone should have known this was coming. But once again, there was no plan in place.”

It wasn’t the first challenge. John McVeigh faced a challenge in Groom, west of Ryan, after conservative branch members moved against the minister for his “betrayal” in voting for marriage equality. The state executive came out in force and McVeigh was saved.

No such intervention came for Prentice.

Scott Morrison, who won preselection in Cook, southern Sydney, after an intervention by senior party figures in 2007 which led to the first candidate resigning, said on Sunday he saw no need for intervention in Prentice’s case. He doubled down on that view on Monday.

“Our party operates on the basis of rank-and-file preselections of party members here in Queensland, and it’s Queenslanders who are deciding who are representing us here in Queensland, not Canberra,” he said.



Prentice’s colleague Warren Entsch lashed out at Morrison’s way of thinking, calling her dumping “a bloody disgrace”.

“Here you have a situation where the state party has sat back and done nothing and allowed this to happen,” he told ABC radio. “You’re not going to get me defending it any shape or form.”

Turnbull praised Prentice’s performance as an assistant minister but ruled out intervening on her behalf.



I’ve had young females in the party ring me up saying, ‘We’re going to resign, we’ve had enough' Michelle Landry, Capricornia MP

“I’m told only 18 of them [the preselection voters] were from the state council, so that was overwhelmingly a local members’ decision and that is … how the Liberal party around the country operates,” the prime minister said.

“Particularly in Queensland, where you have a very strong grassroots tradition. One of our cabinet colleagues [McVeigh] was challenged in his preselection. He was successful.

“We are very sorry to see Jane’s been defeated but it is a … consequence of having a grassroots political party. You have to win the support of your local members to be re-endorsed. That’s something all of us have to do.”

Turnbull’s focus on branch support was seen as vindication by some of Simmonds’ supporters, who said Prentice “had lost the support of the branch. She was a good assistant minister but that came at the sacrifice of being a good local member. I don’t think she did enough to keep them.”

Deb Frecklington, the Queensland Liberal National party opposition leader, said she was “extremely disappointed” but said she would “defend the democratic process”.

“As a party we do need to do better, we do need to get more women to run in our elections,” she said.



Michelle Landry, the MP for Capricornia in central Queensland, told the ABC women within the party were threatening to quit over the decision.

“I’ve had young females in the party ring me up saying, ‘We’re going to resign, we’ve had enough,’ and I said, ‘No don’t – we’ve got to fight this.’

“We’ve got to build more women into the party. We’ve got to get more women into political positions so that we have as much power as the men do.”

Kelly O’Dwyer, the minister for women, has been fighting to do just that. O’Dwyer successfully argued for the women’s budget statement to be included once again in the 2018 budget document, and has been promoting the “Enid Lyons fighting fund” within the party, an account established in the party secretariat to help women win preselections in winnable seats.

But the wider Liberal party continues to push back against quotas. While Labor is close to its quota goal of 50-50 representation, women only make up just over 20% of the Liberal party in federal parliament, with the Nationals only managing 14%.

Of the 24 ministers in cabinet, women hold just five spots, while only one out of six outer ministry positions is held by a woman. In the cohort of 12 assistant ministers, Prentice is one of four women.



Those within the party continue to point to Amanda Stoker’s preselection to replace George Brandis in the Senate, a spot that had been privately discussed as being held for a woman “because of the gender thing”, at least five LNP sources have told Guardian Australia.

The Queensland MPs who may not make it to the next election Read more

“We knew it wouldn’t look good if a woman didn’t get Brandis’s spot,” one said. “So you could say we are aware of how it looks regarding women in this party.”

Others point to Jacinta Price’s preselection for the Country Liberal party in the Northern Territory, and Georgina Downer’s impending preselection in South Australia, in her father’s former seat of Mayo, as proof women are making inroads within the party.

“But you’re never going to have the Liberal party set quotas,” one male Liberal source said. “It’s just not going to happen.

“We need more women. There are people working on getting more women. But every time something like [Prentice losing preselection] happens, every time we hear about a branch moving against someone like Kelly O’Dwyer – and let’s not forget they let that out when she was on maternity leave – we lose women.

“It’s a cultural problem and I don’t think anyone has the answers on how you fix it, in a way which will be accepted by the party. And that’s not quotas.”