The National Party ends its political year as it began, engulfed in a sex scandal that's forcing MPs into hiding, fearing blowback from their electorates.

The capitulation of Victorian MP Andrew Broad's political career was swift and sits in stark contrast to former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce's.

It took a little over 24 hours from when reports first emerged about the married 43-year-old using dating apps to meet younger women to when he ultimately announced he would not seek re-election.

Mr Joyce, 10 months on since revelations of an affair and pregnancy with a former staffer emerged, still sits on the backbench and openly discusses a potential return to the leadership.

Why the two have been handled so differently confounds both party members and the broader public.

Be it that Mr Broad was merely the straw that broke the camel's back, or an electorate fatigued after a long year of salacious political bickering, the response to the most recent scandal appears likely to force the National Party to change its ways.

Leader highlighting a party's failure

Nationals leader Michael McCormack denies his party has a problem with women despite having just two female representatives in the federal party. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts )

In one sentence Nationals leader Michael McCormack inadvertently highlighted the crisis that has now engulfed his party.

"Both the women in my party, Bridget McKenzie, my deputy leader, and Michelle Landry, are Ministers," he said.

They might all be in the ministry but these women represent just 9 per cent of the federal party room.

The party decries non-merit-based appointments and yet insists when they front cameras in Canberra that Senator McKenzie and Ms Landry stand in the front, as if to distract from the pack of blokes standing behind them, all appearing to be cut from an almost identical cloth.

Adding to the party's struggles to convince people of its seriousness towards diversifying is when staffers, in public, forget that Senator McKenzie is not only the deputy leader but also a Cabinet Minister.

Loading

The party points to its pre-selection process as a sign it is changing.

Outspoken Queensland senator Barry O'Sullivan, who Greens leader Richard Di Natale described as a "pig" and accused of throwing "sexist filth", lost his pre-selection to businesswoman Susan McDonald.

Retiring New South Wales senator John Williams has been replaced by irrigator Perin Davey, but she faces a tough battle to get elected given her position on the joint Coalition Senate ticket.

Ms Landry, the only Nationals woman in the Lower House, faces a tough re-election battle in her ultra-marginal Queensland seat.

A loss for her and a failure of Ms Davey to be elected would leave the party where it started before the election, with just two women in Canberra.

'Good blokes' no longer cutting it

Salacious reports of Mr Broad's private life came after Victorian election results rammed home the trouble the party faced with women.

The safe Nationals seat of Mildura fell to an independent woman, mirroring results inflicted on the party in the northern Victorian seat of Shepparton at the previous state election.

"I like Crispy as a person but he's stale and been in for too long," is how one 20-something former National Party voter in Mildura described his vote in the state poll.

"Crispy" in this case was the incumbent MP Peter Crisp, who lost his safe seat to Ali Cupper, a high-profile local government councillor.

Independent candidate Ali Cupper defeated a Nationals MP in a previously safe Victorian State Parliament seat. ( Facebook: Ali Cupper )

Few voters ever criticised Mr Crisp as a person but many lamented a lack of funding his electorate received during his 12 years in office.

Ms Cupper, meanwhile, campaigned on the need for greater hospital funding and regional rail services and didn't hide from her support of issues like same-sex marriage and the need to deal with climate change.

The National Party didn't lose this seat because its brand was out of favour. It lost the seat because a younger candidate offered a vision, in contrast to the incumbent, that resonated with voters.

The state results did, however, offer a glimmer of hope where the party's future success might lie.

First-term National MPs Emma Kealy and Steph Ryan — two women who set themselves apart if not by their gender but for the fact that both are in their 30s — were re-elected with greater margins.

The Victorian party room has long been dominated by former footballers, but in recent years, through getting women elected in Lower and Upper House seats, has branched out to include former teachers and a hospital executive.

Steph Ryan immediately became the Victorian Nationals deputy leader upon her election to the State Parliament in 2014. ( ABC News: Alison Savage )

Woman set to replace departing MP

When the week started few could have predicted Mr Broad would dominate the headlines.

Back then (just days ago) the party was working itself into knots having to explain how a National Party staffer could keep his job having sent vile text messages to a female journalist.

Add in Mr Broad's actions and it compounded community perceptions that the men regional Australia was sending to Canberra were living lives out of touch with community expectations.

It's left National Party members, politicians and voters the ABC has spoken with universally agreeing a woman needs to replace Mr Broad in Mallee.

"The party has refused to change so now we will force it to," one voter said.

They have savaged Mr Broad for offering a running commentary on so-called traditional family values during the same-sex marriage debate, only to behave differently in his private life.

Even the federal party president Larry Anthony has added his support to the calls for a woman to "stand for the National Party in Mallee" at the next federal election.

But if it proves to be that a woman becomes the next Member for Mallee, it will be thanks to the regional electorate having dragged the National Party kicking and screaming.