Katina Curtis: The thing that is missing from WA Liberal seats is women

What have the Liberals learned over the past three years?

The allegations and workplace culture in Parliament that led to the party’s supposed reckoning over its “women problem” are being relitigated again, this time in Perth courts.

Meanwhile, around the city, Liberal members are gathering to pick their next crop of candidates they want to send to Canberra.

By the end of next week, the party will have candidates in every federal electorate apart from Fremantle.

They are yet to choose a woman in a winnable seat, apart from the fait accompli of re-endorsing Melissa Price up in Durack.

It’s called the glass cliff, where women are more likely than men to be running marginal or unwinnable seats.

This column pointed out in February that the Liberals could end up with more men from military backgrounds than women representing WA after the next election.

That is becoming reality.

Mark Wales vacated the field in Tangney to deal with family health issues (and is reportedly looking for a seat in Victoria), making way for non-veteran Howard Ong.

But you’ve got Matt Moran, the boy from Boya, who finally found a seat where the preselectors would have him in Bullwinkel, while Vince Connolly has now quit the RSL and hit the hustings in Moore.

SAS veteran Andrew Hastie is going around once again in Canning.

This is not about the plebiscite model, which Michaelia Cash described as “the most democratic process of any party” in WA.

It’s about who is joining in.

Only a handful of the preselection races for the 16 federal seats even had female contenders.

Claire Moody, Susanna Panaia and Felicia Adeniki were unopposed in Brand, Perth and Cowan respectively. All Labor seats with margins above 9 per cent.

But in winnable seats? Only Holly Ludeman put her hand up, and she drew less than a quarter of the votes from preselectors in Bullwinkel.

Now, the party has done better in its State preselections, where women are running in more than 40 per cent of the winnable seats – eight out of 18.

That is worth applauding.

And yes, it does face the unusual circumstance of needing to fill many blue-ribbon state seats at the same time as finding competitive federal candidates.

And sure, it has achieved a degree of diversity on measures that aren’t gender.

But the other explanations – excuses – for filling at best 14 per cent of winnable federal seats with female candidates are not new.

WA hasn’t moved any closer to Canberra so it still takes a long time to cross the country.

Politics continues to be an all-consuming dragon of a profession that too often chews up relationships and spits out the broken pieces.

Senior party sources insist the dearth of women putting their hands up the attempt to join the federal team is not for a lack of trying to recruit them.

But they also recognise they must do better next time, and start actively pushing more women to seek preselections well before the 2028 poll.

Already there are some waiting in the wings who felt that 2025 was not their time – children still in school, family circumstances not quite right – or who are fully prepared to run twice or use this experience as a stepping stone into other political roles.

Great. Now there needs to be follow-through.

Another piece of the puzzle to attracting more women into politics is falling into place with the introduction of new laws to set up an independent parliamentary standards commission that will police and punish seriously poor behaviour.

This was a major recommendation from the Jenkins review of behaviour in parliamentary workplaces.

But while it will have remit to investigate serious allegations like sexual harassment and bullying, it won’t deal with the more insidious behaviour that also makes joining parliament a tough ask for many women.

Independent MP Zali Steggall called out both Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese for leading and condoning the heckling, bullying, shouting and intimidation within the chamber.

“Some who have been in this place too long, who I think have lost touch with what is acceptable behaviour outside this place, and think that because you describe this place as a bubble, somehow it condones a different standard of behaviour. It doesn’t,” she said.

Robust debate is one thing, performatively drowning out people and howling down points you disagree with is another thing entirely.

Parties who were serious about bringing high-calibre women with real-world experience into their ranks would be doing everything they could to make Parliament an attractive place to work.