Outgoing Liberal Party president Alan Stockdale urges recruitment of more women

Updated

The first Federal Liberal Council meeting since last September's election victory is focusing on finding ways to retain power and build on recent electoral success.

Outgoing president Alan Stockdale says the party needs to boost its membership and increase the number of women in senior roles.

"The party needs to attract and retain more women as office bearers as candidates and as MPs. This should be seen as a key priority for the party as a whole," he said.

Mr Stockdale, who is retiring from the presidency after six years, says the party also needs to find new ways to raise funds.

"I believe that fundraising will attract more and more regulation and will become even more difficult than it has been over the last few years," he said.

"As a result, I believe the party has no real choice but to place increased reliance on raising a large number of small donations as happens in many other western democracies.

"Subject to proper protection of the party's interest, we should make it easier for people to join the party and more difficult for vested interests to exclude applicants.

"I also think that we should consider opening the federal organisation to corporate membership across the country particularly as we're facing a pattern of the banning of corporate donations."

People can often be put off by what they might see as being away from home all the time or it not being very family friendly and I think we have to make some allowances for those sorts of things. Richard Alston

Former Howard government minister Richard Alston easily won the contest to replace Mr Stockdale last night.

Mr Alston says he will consider Mr Stockdale's parting suggestions.

"We're open to all sensible suggestions and I'll be going through Alan's speech with a fine-tooth comb and analysing them all," he said.

He says the Liberal Party can do more to encourage better female representation.

"I think most people have said tonight, 'We've got to look at any barriers that there might be.' But we've had some very good women come through, so it's not that somehow they're actively discouraged," he said.

"I think we just have to facilitate a greater level of involvement and if there are people out there wanting to stand, well, we'd be delighted to have them.

"People can often be put off by what they might see as being away from home all the time or it not being very family friendly and I think we have to make some allowances for those sorts of things.

"If we can do that in a way that's compatible with people doing their duties then I think we will find more."

Alston resists call for community selection of candidates

Mr Alston's only opponent for the presidency was John Ruddick, whose pitch included a call for more community involvement in selecting Senate candidates like in the United States' primary system.

"In the State of Oklahoma, 250,000 people decided that they wanted to have a say in who their candidate would be and in Mississippi it was almost half a million people," Mr Ruddick said.

"Both Oklahoma and Mississippi have a smaller population than the city of Melbourne but hundreds of thousands of people woke up two days ago and they said, 'Yes, I want to have a say in who my candidate is going to be in the election in November'.

"I don't believe there's any significant difference in the amount of interest that the average Australian has in politics compared to the average American."

But Mr Alston has played down the idea, saying the Senate is not the same as the lower house.

He said Mr Ruddick himself noted that two or three large electorates might dominate and leave the party drawing from a narrow group of people.

"No one state has gone down this path," Mr Alston said.

The Prime Minister will give the major address to the meeting this afternoon.

Topics: parliament, federal-government, federal-parliament, government-and-politics, liberals, political-parties, women, australia

First posted