More Women in Politics? Err, No.

Why is it that governments and political parties endlessly seek to solve non-problems while desperately trying to avoid solving actual problems?  Examples of non-problems whose corrective policies cost billions and create chaos?  Look no further than virus-chasing and climate “emergencies”.  And what about “the voice”?  There have been more indigenous megaphones in modern Australia than you can poke a stick at.  Most of them (already tried), as Warren Mundine and others have pointed out, have been beyond useless, including for those whom they were designed.  Finally, there is the perennial republican canard.  We already have a constitutional system that works rather well, and an Australian head of state (the governor-general) to boot.  Another non-problem, then.

Which brings us to the eternal, said-with-a-straight-face issue of more women in politics.  We have witnessed the dreary lament yet again in the Liberal Party since its recent disastrous election performance.  It just keeps turning up like a bad penny.  The Sydney Morning Herald chirruped that the 47th parliament has more women members than ever before.  I think they think that this is (necessarily) a good thing, something to be celebrated.  The theory is, if we get more women in politics, then, what exactly?  It is either about being more “representative” or being more “feminine”.  Neither argument is worth the paper on which it is printed.  More cynically, perhaps, the real reason why corporatist political parties want more women in parliament is so they can court and harvest the female vote.  How very patronising to think that women only vote for women.  And so superficial.  What of the claim that more women will improve the “tone” of parliament?  Well, they haven’t so far.  Given all the recent bullying allegations flying around against women politicians, it might be better to park that one. 

I guess there is one more potential reason why so many “voices” urge greater female representation.  It is because most women in politics – certainly the loudest and most persistent – are woke, green and leftist, just like most of the voiced class.  Those who cheer on the issue do so for ideological reasons, nothing more and nothing less.  Just look at the “greatest hits” list – Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner, Cheryl Kernot, Anna Bligh, Gladys, Annastacia, Julia, Kristina, Penny, Sarah, Mehreen, Marise and Lidia.  What a line-up for the ages!  No wonder the Silly Moaning Hilmer wants more women.  Equally, look at the flip side.  Who was the last progessive you heard praising Margaret Thatcher?  Sarah Palin?  Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen?  Amanda Stoker?  Nicolle Flint?  Pauline?  Marine Le Pen?  No, I didn’t think so.

The other day I chanced upon a copy of Troy Bramston’s book on the Wran era.  Neville Wran was, arguably, Australia’s most successful and perhaps its most accomplished politician.  Wran’s ministry is depicted on the book’s cover.  The first thing you notice is – no women!  None.  Oh, and the men of the Cabinet were mostly ageing and white, too.  No obvious homosexuals.  No one in a wheelchair.  On the face of it, we should be out there finding statues of Neville to tear down.  He was (clearly) almost criminally misogynistic and discriminatory, an embarrassment.  Not really, on reflection.  Wran was a moderniser, socially liberal (if you like that sort of thing), a reformer, and, incidentally, adored by women of a certain generation (like my late mother).  He didn’t need a Cabinet full of women to be either massively successful, pro-women or leftist.  He actually got by with none.  Not without irony as it happens, the chapter in Bramston’s book on women’s policy, written by Carmel Niland, was titled “The Decade in which NSW Led the World in Women’s Rights”.  Ouch.

Equal representation for women in parliament is yet another classic non-problem.  One more case of seeking a “voice” for a citizen-category which already has megaphonic representation.  Who needs females in parliament when you have The Squad at the ABC?  And Lisa at The Project.  And endless males who dutifully coo on demand and reflexively project a feminist world-view.  Or who salivate at the thought of yet more abortions.  Think Adam Bandt.  Or David Pocock.  Or Alex Greenwich.  No, if there is compelling evidence that having more women in politics will change anything for the better, I am yet to see it. 

Edmund Burke’s classic formulation of the parliamentary representative’s core task – to leave your views and baggage at the door in order to take on the higher role of considering with awareness, courage, thoughtfulness and wisdom the great issues of the day.  Burke might also add in the current climate, leave your chromosomes at the door.  Burke’s is “the trustee model”, as opposed to the delegate model, of representation, in which he argued that the politician’s “behavior in Parliament should be informed by (sexist language alert) his knowledge and experience, allowing him to serve the public interest”.  What we see today instead is relentless identitarianism, and almost no deliberative policy debate with outcomes that might actually please someone without ideological baggage.  You know, a normal person.  From Club Sensible.  An ordinary reasonable man or woman.  A Clapham Omnibus type.  One wearing the philosopher John Rawls’ veil of ignorance in a “state of nature”, thus preventing him or her from knowingly having a vested interest, especially one skewed by some conception of identity, in the outcome. 

It is not as if there are no real problems with Australia’s representative democracy. 

There are, indeed, many voters without a real voice.  Here are just a few.  Those who oppose climate action (now, or any other time) do not have a real voice.  Those who are aghast that, now, members of parliament only see themselves as siphons for funneling taxpayer money to their own electorates, and nothing much more, are a forever silent minority.  Those who lament the ever-increasing power of the administrative state are very lonely.  Like those who, weirdly, now, it seems, bemoan fiscal incontinence.  Those who lost their jobs because they refused the Covid’s State’s useless and dangerous jab have been officially swept under the carpet, never to be mentioned again in polite circles.  Those who rue the near total collapse of our education system, from the now ubiquitous child-minding centres to our universities (our other child-minding centres), may as well bang their heads against a brick wall.  Those who want a conservative Liberal Party – even a liberal one would do – have no voice.  Neither do their old-Labor counterparts, who are forced sullenly to observe a working class party that actually hates the working class and all that it values.  Where is the voice of those who genuinely fear for our future – even our present – freedom and rights in the face of the now virulent pandemic industry, the push towards cashlessness and the Orwellian bio-digital state?  Who stands up for parents who resent the morally bankrupt, woke rubbish their children are forced to learn at school?  Christian voters gave up some time back.

Is there the remotest evidence that simply having more women in parliament would help solve any of these real problems?  Nope.  What are needed are representatives of either sex who take on board the needs of normal people, who value those people and who set out to stand up for their rights.

The problem is not how many women are, or are not, in politics.  It is the kind of women who go into politics that is the problem.  For they are (above all else, and with a tiny number of exceptions) just like the men who go into politics.  They are rabidly careerist, corporatist stooges.  They come from an extremely narrow, managerialist gene pool.  They have little affection for the forgotten citizens of whom Menzies spoke.  They are generally green-globalist ideologues.  And they have neither any clue about real people’s concerns nor a desire to address them.  Just like the men we insist on electing, the women we choose to elect end up parroting talking points given to them by the leader’s office – no freelancing is ever permitted – and roll ever onwards, no doubt earning the gratitude and the plaudits of the ABC Squad Class, but not much else.  They serve the political class and fail to serve our interests.  The affection that that class has for serving its own ideological interests and ignoring ours has simply found another avenue of fulfilment.  As absurd canards go, the pursuit of more women in politics is down there with the worst. 

The totally lost Liberal Party, in particular, might want to take note.

Paul Collits

16 September 2022