Former prime minister says there’s a need for change, such as a 50-50 male-female split on preselection panels

The Liberal party “absolutely” has a women problem and requires structural reform to assist more women into parliament, the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said on International Women’s Day.

Speaking at Oxford University on Friday, Turnbull said there was “no question” the Liberal party had a serious gender inequality issue, and to suggest otherwise was not credible. He suggested that institutional reform of the party – such as a 50-50 male-female split on preselection panels – would be necessary to change its culture.

Turnbull said there were cultural issues not only among the Liberals, but also across parliament and Australian politics.

“The Liberal party does have a women’s problem in the sense that we do not have enough women in parliament. And it is one that the party is acutely aware of,” he said.

“I am a very, very strong critic of the culture in Australian politics … the culture with respect to women and with respect for women and attitudes to women in Australian politics is more like the corporate world in the 1980s, maybe a bit earlier. It’s far, far too blokey.”

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Turnbull said the Labor party, with a more hierarchical, centralised structure, was able to institute measures such as quotas to a greater extent, whichhad led to its female representation in parliament reaching 46%.

The Liberal party has a target of 50% female representation by 2025, but has conceded it is unlikely to reach that. It currently has female representation of 23%.

The Liberals have also been rocked by the resignations of cabinet ministers Julie Bishop and Kelly O’Dwyer. While the party says it has preselected 19 women for seats in the coming election, a poor result could leave it with just a handful of women in the House of Representatives.

Of the existing group of 11 female members of the House, three are unlikely to hold their seats, while Ann Sudmalis has quit politics (and has been replaced by a man, and Jane Prentice was dumped in a preselection battle in favour of a male candidate.

Of the 75 woman currently in federal parliament, 19 are Liberals and two Nationals, the lowest proportion of female representatives of any political party.

Turnbull said reforming the Liberal party structure was difficult.

“It’s very hard in a grassroots political movement, to say to a constituency see ‘you’ve got to pre-select a woman here’. The members will say ‘hang on, this is our party’.

“The challenge is to get … more women into the political system, into the Liberal party.”

Turnbull said that when the Liberal party had been founded by Menzies and others, it united several women’s organisations under the Liberal banner, of which resonances still existed: in some divisions there was constitutional provision for male and female vice-presidents of divisions or branches.

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“I think we are going to have to, in the Liberal party, start to institutionalise [changes] – you know, perhaps pre-selection panels must be 50-50 men and women. Without taking away the autonomy of members, we’ve got to make a much bigger effort.”

His comments follow a BBC interview, in which he had said he had been ousted by his party because they feared he would win the next election, and a Twitter interjection on climate policy, in which he had described his predecessor Tony Abbott’s support for new coal-fired power plants as blinded by “ideology and innumerate idiocy”.

Turnbull’s views on the Liberal party’s gender inequity are in contrast to those of his successor Scott Morrison, who argued in a speech on International Women’s Day that the empowerment of women should not come only at the expense of men.

“We’re not about setting Australians against each other, trying to push some down to lift others up,” Morrison had told a function organised by the Australian mining industry’s Chamber of Minerals and Energy.

“We want to see women rise. But we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.”