The two-week intensive program, embedding aspiring female Liberal candidates with politicians, is Kroger's idea to help redress the party's female representation problem; an attempt to lure eligible women into putting themselves up for preselection. The only problem with the Enid Lyons Leadership Program is it exists only in name. No women have been through the program, and it has no party funding. Loading “We haven’t pressed the button on it yet”, says Kroger, a former senator. “We have been talking about it since I became chair last year. I have spoken to the federal executive about it.” Asked whether she has been offered any party funding for the program, Kroger says: “No, but it would be unfair to say no one has offered because I haven’t characterised it in that way.”

For the moment, at least, the Enid Lyons Leadership Program remains an aspiration, just like the Liberals’ nebulous hopes for better female representation in parliament. Within the Coalition, there are only 13 females in the House of Representatives, compared with 63 men. Across both chambers, less than 25 per cent of Liberal parliamentarians are women. Even among the party’s more conservative quarters, there seems agreement this is a problem, not least electorally - since 2001 the Liberals’ support among women relative to men has waned. Young women, in particular, are turning off the Liberal party. But there is no agreement on the problem’s necessary solution, and no apparent resolve to find one. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video This is despite the open discussion, in the media and within the party, of the Liberals’ “woman problem”, thrown into sharp relief by the fallout from Malcolm Turnbull’s ousting.

The leadership spill “Muppet Show”, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison has named it - unfair though that may be on muppets - brought forth allegations of gender-based bullying, from Victorian MP Julia Banks and senators Linda Reynolds and Lucy Gichuhi. It also resulted in the resignation from the frontbench of the Liberals’ most senior woman, Julie Bishop, and the decision of star female recruit, Banks, who won a Labor-held seat at the 2016 election, not to re-contest the next election. Loading The reason, Banks says, is the “appalling behaviour” she has witnessed in her short political career, which she said was “an umbrella descriptor for: bullying, intimidation, harassment, sexual or otherwise, or a lack of integrity”. In a speech to parliament on Wednesday night, Banks called for her party to adopt gender quotas as a “reset mechanism” to create an “equal playing field”.

She said parliament was “five to 10 years behind the business world” when it came to female representation. This week Sydney MP Craig Laundy became the first male Liberal MP to add his voice to the calls for gender-based quotas. Morrison ruled the quota idea out, and said he was dealing internally with reports of bullying from female parliamentarians. He was reported to have offered Banks a three-month secondment to New York, in an apparent attempt to disappear her from Canberra while the heat was on his government over its alleged sexism. She declined. Meanwhile, Morrison made it clear he wanted a female candidate, Katherine O’Regan, to win the Liberals’ Wentworth preselection battle, which took place on Thursday night in Sydney’s Rose Bay. His insistence on O’Regan - by no means a frontrunner before Morrison’s intervention - seemed a short-term political fix to a deeper structural problem. Katherine O'Regan lost the preselection battle in the seat of Wentworth, despite the backing of PM Scott Morrison. Credit:AAP Whatever it was, it didn’t work - former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma won the preselection.

Quotas may be unpalatable to conservatives, but there is no doubt they work - the Labor party has used them successfully to reach about 46 per cent female representation in federal caucus. But the Q-word is haram to most Liberals, who believe the concept undermines the party’s principles of individualism and meritocracy. And so we hear talk of “targets”, or “hard targets”, or “goals”. Loading The Liberals already have an “aspiration” of 50/50 representation by 2025. On current trends they will not come close to meeting it. When asked about quotas on Thursday, Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer was similarly avoidant of the word, while edging dangerously close to it. “I have long advocated for targets, but also making sure that those targets are realised by having measurements along the way so there is a clear pathway to actually achieve and reach those targets,” she told reporters.

When asked directly about the word quota, O’Dwyer said: “I am very comfortable talking about targets”. “In life we choose our own language on these things and that’s the language I’m happy with,” she told Fairfax Media. “But a target without a measurement doesn’t have much value ... before every federal election there are preselections. That is the time to take stock and measure the success of every state organisation, and we should look at those safer seats as well as marginals.” Kroger says the women's committees of the state organisations strongly reject any suggestion there is a problem with the party's culture, and "they were concerned it could be conceived as women being characterised as victims". On Friday, Peta Credlin, former chief of staff to Tony Abbott, made a renewed call for a national body to work with state divisions of the Liberal party to achieve its target of 50/50 representation by 2025. Credlin said “fair dinkum targets do work”, but rejected the idea of “quotas”.

Judith Troeth, a former Liberal senator who represented Victoria from 1993 to 2011, has no problem saying the word. She says she has been arguing for quotas since 2010. “The position of Liberal women in the parliament has gone backwards, and I cannot see … the state Liberal party organisations taking any positive action to improve this position,” she says. “There is a lot of talk but no action. The good wishes and merit argument has got us nowhere, because women are not being pre-selected and they are certainly not being preselected in safe seats.” Judith Troeth says that as long as women are pre-selected for mostly marginal seats, the gender parity problem will remain. Credit: Glen McCurtayne Troeth says that as long as women are pre-selected for mostly marginal seats - which seems to happen because they are considered “such wonderful marginal seat campaigners” - the gender parity problem will remain.

“The women usually get good publicity and they win the seat, but then the tide goes out again at the next election and they lose it,” she says. “Our numbers will continue to go down unless we can guarantee women some sort of longevity in parliament.” It is for this reason O’Dwyer is insistent women need to be considered for winnable seats, not just marginals. Earlier this year she established the Enid Lyons Fighting Fund, to provide supplementary money for women currently in parliament, or who are standing for winnable seats, to help them stay elected or get elected. Already, the negative election advertisements are writing themselves. As the week drew to a close, the Labor party was circulating a new ad on social media, featuring a beaming Opposition Leader Bill Shorten surrounded by a horde of Labor caucus-women. “This party supports women”, ran the tagline. The photo was laid next to a staid picture of Scott Morrison at the despatch box, with an all-male line-up behind him. “This party doesn’t,” said the caption.