By Aerchie
The Liberal Party does not have a problem with women.
It has a problem with white, middle-aged males. They do make up the vast majority of the elected members of the Liberal Party, as well as the vast majority of the un-elected hidden party apparatchiks. The few women who are involved with the Liberal Party are probably accepted because they can make the tea and cook the after-meeting cakes.
This has been politics since the time of Athens. Sadly for the Liberal Party, times have changed just a little in the past 2,500 years. Not that they have noticed. Just as they have failed to notice many other changes in society.
Kelly O’Dwyer herself told her colleagues last year that the Liberals were widely seen as “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers.”
White middle-aged males have always held the power in white Anglo-Saxon society. They are mentored by old white males who have graduated from middle age. And the one thing they all agree on is that women do not belong in Parliament, unless it is to bring them a glass of water.
Maybe, one day, just before their extinction, the Liberal Party will suddenly wake up to what has created the success of both the ALP and the Greens. The electorate is slightly more female than male!
Of course, if the Liberal Party were to allow roughly equal numbers of women into the Parliament, then the Liberal Party would totally change its abilities, attitudes and aims. The Party would become unrecognisable.
Perhaps this is why the current Liberal Party is so opposed to change. In a new equality-based Liberal Party, there would be no room for the dinosauric white middle-aged white males!
This article was originally published on Aerchie’s Archives.
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I’ve read commentary from the LNP, when thinking about an electorate have pronounced, “We need a woman to run here”. No they don’t. What they need is the best available candidate, which is precisely the problem; the best candidates do not get chosen if they happen to be female. The LNP seem to think that as long as they put a skirt on a seat, and any skirt will do then it’s “job done”.
The ridiculous charade of recently promoted Linda Reynolds and Sarah Henderson being trotted out to say move along, nothing to see here, was humiliating. As was the silencing of Ann Sudmalis through a three month all expenses paid junket to New York, a bribe Julia Banks rejected. By all accounts, Julie Bishop is only staying on to stop Christian Porter from taking her seat. They want us to believe they select people on merit and then step in to save Craig Kelly????
Given that LNP policies are NOT conducive to welcoming dark-skinned ethnicities, LGTB whatever persons, social activists for climate, animal welfare, water reticulation and a host of other things….and given also that males in that dominant grouping are ego-centric whereas women are by and large socio-centric with an ear to their networks and the opoinions of….One would have to wonder just WHERE the LNP could go to…with the exception of mega-corporation board-rooms….to find a fair and classy female selection of constituent representatives even willing to put their hand up to join such a scion of degenerates!
A good example of the real problem would be underlying “policy” Lack of it, dictated by neoliberal “values” and the exemplary role within this of servile careerist environment minister Melissa Price.
it relates to the government’s values, and Australian and Western poitics in general (think Trump republicanism or Brexit), so I am not sure blame for the following example of the malaise is solely a federal one.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/22/murray-darling-river-aboriginal-culture-dry-elders-despair-walgett
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/22/adani-2000-hectares-black-throated-finch-habitat-removed-from-conservation-plans
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/22/yellow-crazy-ants-world-heritage-area-at-risk-through-lack-of-funding
Shopfront politics does seem exclusively to be about the optics, underlying mentality, approach, goals and ideology does remain conveniently obscured.
The following article by not fooled Van Badham cuts through the bullshit to the real problem:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2019/jan/20/whatever-happens-to-kelly-odwyers-seat-the-coalition-are-toast
In the end, the problem involves the rise of “opinion” riddled MSM and their shallow approach to identity politics and identity politics versus censored out situational politics in a vacuum.
It is the hollowed out shell of a media and educational system dumbed down by people like Murdoch, Fifield and Dutton in the service of bubble mentality corporations avoiding publicity for their criminality.
This comment is aimed at Badham, et al, opponents rather than Badham and her category, but the system always requires a token presence of broadsheet writers to preserve the illusion of investigative debate. It is an example of what Herbert Marcuse once described as “repressive tolerance” and suspect Badham and the broadsheeters are as frustrated as readers and viewers at the underlying situation.
Basically, the System is the real problem, involving atavistic elements of capitalism, patriarchy and anthropological factors grafted on to the complexity of a twenty first century world. The old Soviet wasn’t the only “command” economy dislocated from reality, in subtle ways the “globalised” economy follows the pattern.
I was going to comment but after seeing The Thing from Another LNP lurking behind O’Dwyer thoughts of posting deserted me.
Not only do the Liberals have a problem with women, it seems that Morrison has a problem with democracy within the Liberal party. He chose to cancel all pre-selections in NSW to protect sitting member Craig Kelly for reasons obviously not connected with merit or competence.
Now, after the Liberal branch in Gilmore, on the NSW south coast, had already chosen real estate agent Grant Schultz to contest the marginal seat, replacing the sitting member Ann Sudmalis, they have been overidden by Morrison who has parachuted in former Labor Party president Warren Mundine as the Liberal candidate.
Mundine is a serial media performer and I doubt that he has any more to offer the electors of Gilmore than he did the Labor party or the various other roles he has latched on to linked to his aboriginal heritage. No disrespect to Mr Mundine but you are being used as a patsy by the Liberal party and this cynical and manipulative prime minister.
Amusingly, Warren Mundine is not a member of the LIberal party but a spokesperson assures the electorate that he shares Liberal party values………….is that an insult ?……………..and he will join the Liberal party later today [unless he gets a better offer] !
How many more months must we endure this clueless moron. Does he have terminal diabetes or does he just look like fat, morose mental patient on purpose?
How many more months of this Infomercial pretending to be a political party?
Yes, Warren Mundine, champion of the oppressed, who spat the dummy in 2012 quitting the Labor Party when not endorsed for a safe seat citing the party had moved too far to the left, good mate of that other champion of the oppressed Twiggy Forrest, and now has found his true calling in the bosom of his parents in law at the Sydney Institute.
Outstanding candidate.
On Mundine, Josh Fydenberg said today :
“The deputy Liberal leader, Josh Frydenberg, said the selection of candidates is a matter for the NSW division and local branches”
So Morrison is overriding the local branch and insisting on his Captain’s pick of Mundine who doesn’t even live in the electorate.
The Liberal party is at war with itself.
Now, now readers ….. “Never disturb your enemy while they are making mistakes”. Napoleon Bonaparte