Party likely to have fewer female MPs after the poll, as some members push for quotas

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Only 30% of candidates vying to win marginal seats for the Liberals at next month’s election are women, data released by the Australian Electoral Commission shows.

The lack of women in Liberal ranks has become an ongoing challenge for the Coalition, with the party likely to have fewer female MPs after the election than it did in the last parliament.

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Scott Morrison has said he wants to “get the results” of greater female representation in parliament, but on current trends the party will struggle to meet its target of women making up half its MPs by 2025.

Of the 50 seats classified as marginal by the AEC – defined as having a margin of less than 6% – Labor has preselected 28 women, or 56%. The Liberal and National parties have preselected women in just 15 out of 50 – 30%.

More of the women preselected by both major parties for this election are in safe seats. An ABC analysis shows Labor has preselected women in 44% of all lower house seats, while for the Coalition this is 27%.

Labor’s shadow women’s minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the figures showed that “Labor takes gender equality seriously”.

“The better the parliament reflects the community we seek to represent, the better decisions we make,” Plibersek said.

The Coalition has come under fire for its so-called “women problem”, with MPs reluctant to introduce formal quotas despite the dwindling number of women in its ranks.

But some Liberals have said enforceable targets or quotas should be considered, and have pushed for the party to do more to preselect women in safe seats when they become available.

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull conceded last month that the Liberal party “was acutely aware” of the need to boost the number of women in the party.

The party’s representation of federal female MPs dropped to just 19 of 83 sitting MPs when the Victorian Liberal Julia Banks defected to the crossbench, leaving the government with fewer women than it had 30 years ago under John Howard.