Australian women should be glad that Julie Bishop did not just become Australia’s second female Prime Minister
When the Liberal Party of Australia voted against their former party deputy in the August leadership spill to keep Peter Dutton out of the top job, women across the country breathed a sigh of relief. If Julie Bishop became Australia’s second female Prime Minister to take office as the result of a leadership spill, win at the next election and spend four years being undermined by the ingrained boys club mentality of her party, that would be the saddest story.
It speaks volumes that Liberal MPs snubbed their most senior woman and to many it wasn’t at all surprising. But, Australians can take some comfort in knowing that the Liberals’ rejection of Bishop wasn’t only because she’s a woman, it’s because even to the Liberal Party, Dutton is a bad bet for Australia.
Bishop has been a diplomatic success as Australia’s foreign minister, ‘our finest’, according to former PM Malcolm Turnbull. Her poise under pressure is unparalleled within her party, albeit across all parties in current Australian politics. Bishop has headed arguably the most stable and consistent ministry over the past five years. She was the first woman to hold the position and she did so with dignity, restraint and composure — her legacy will include her work to make the most of Australia’s UNSC seat and using it to tackle Islamic State’s rise in Iraq and Syria and the holding of Russia to account over the downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, as well as the healing of Australian-Indonesian relations. She has all the attributes of a formidable leader — overcoming internal party conflict to further Australia’s (conservative) national interests both locally and internationally.
To see a politician with Bishop’s diplomatic experience in this climate of questionable political competence be snubbed so outright says a lot about the Liberal party’s inability to grapple with the idea of women’s leadership.
When Bishop was asked about former PM Julia Gillard’s experience of sexism and the famous misogyny speech of 2013, Bishop took a hard line. She called the speech ‘inappropriate’ and that Gillard ‘was no victim of a glass ceiling’, all the while further pushing her resounding claim that she needn’t classify herself a feminist to fight for women’s equality. This position has been hers throughout her political career, telling a National Press Club in 2014 that feminism is ‘not a term that I find particularly useful these days’. Bishop’s particular form of definitely-not-feminism-even-though-it-looks-and-smells-like-it and her way of existing within the Liberal party fits their bill perfectly: women’s equality is self-determined, it’s not up to the blokes to change, it’s up to women to man-up. It’s arguable that in reflecting on the last week of the Coalition’s politics and her harsh defeat in the first round of the spill, securing only 11 votes out of 85 members, that feminism is more than useful. It’s necessary.
The leadership spill was triggered by a collection of MPs of the Liberal Party’s far right out to avenge Turnbull and although gender may not have been the only factor, a woman leader, no matter how ‘not-feminist’ she is, is indigestible for that big L boys club, especially those in the conservative faction of the party. Bishop is arguably the most fit for office within the Coalition, with popularity, experience and a sweet knack for a good one-liner on her side, but it’s no secret that the Liberal party has a women-problem. A Roy Morgan poll conducted only a day before the Spill showed that Bishop was far in front of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten as preferred PM and had the most promising chance at winning the next election. A Newscorp Poll showed she was preferred leader. This debacle has demonstrated how disconnected this party is from the Australian public, and how little the spill had to do with winning elections. It was about factionalism and reprisal.
ANU political lecturer Jill Sheppard recently said ‘Conservative voters tend to look at men as natural leaders in a way they don’t look at women’, but this is a highly entertaining thought considering the hot and heavy reality TV drama available to stream on iView called ‘LIBSPILL’ that the Australian public has witnessed at the hands of the country’s male politicians.
Had the Liberal Party been smart enough to elect Julie Bishop their leader, it wouldn’t have cured or even gotten close to the source of the Party’s women-problem, or just an overall progression problem. Julie would probably have befallen the same fate as Turnbull, rolling over to appease the Coalition’s far-right in a continuing trend of political ambiguity kept for those in the Liberal party who still have a skerrick of humanitarianism about them.
The Liberal Party is having a crisis of identity. When Bishop was asked if she believed the Liberal Party would elect a female leader, she replied coolly ‘When we find one, I’m sure we will’, as if a woman with 20 years’ parliamentary experience, a former deputy leader and a politician with a skill for international diplomacy wasn’t already under their noses.
Australian women do not want to see a second female Prime Minister of Australia be crucified in politics and the media because of a party’s inability to effect change. Australian women want to elect a party that wants a female leader.
