by PAUL COLLITS – DO WE really need – or want – more women in politics?
The never ending quest for more female MPs is yet another example of political Parties endlessly seeking to solve non-problems – while desperately avoiding actual problems.
We have yet again witnessed the dreary lament in the Liberal Party since its recent disastrous election performance. The woman issue just keeps turning up like a bad penny.
- Those who cheer on gender quotas do so for ideological reasons, nothing more and nothing less.
- Who needs female MPs when you have the ABC? And Lisa at The Project.
- What is needed are people of either sex who take on board the needs of normal people.
The Sydney Morning Herald chirruped that the 47th parliament has more women members than ever before.
CELEBRATED
They believe 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 tend to 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 female 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 moaning SMH wants more women. Equally, look at the flip side.
Who was the last progessive you heard praising Margaret Thatcher? Or Sarah Palin? Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen? Amanda Stoker? Nicolle Flint? Pauline? Marine Le Pen? Giorgia Meloni? No, I can’t think of anyone either.
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.
MOTHER
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, is entitled “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 was that one’s views and baggage were left 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. An ordinary reasonable man or woman.
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.
AGHAST
Those who are aghast that members of parliament now 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, now weirdly, it would seem, bemoan fiscal incontinence.
Those who lost their jobs because they refused the COVID 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 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?
BANKRUPT
Who stands up for parents who resent the morally bankrupt, woke rubbish their children are forced fed 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, bar 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.
PARROTING
Just like the men we send to parliament, 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.PC
Look what the Liberal Party are trying to achieve in Pittwater…a female to replace Rob Stokes !!
Another Captains pick perhaps ?
This is certainly not just a job for the boys! But feel Paul is correct in his description of so many from the left who scream loudly and often about nothing 🙁 There are still some who know and speak truth but they aren’t speaking it loud enough! Because there is no accountability in Parliament and PS, unless your thoughts and aims are anti-conservative! Then your days it seems are numbered 🙁
According to the Myer Briggs personality type test, commonly used in recruitment to find best fit for the job, 75.5% of women are feelers as opposed to thinkers. This might be good in caring professions such as nursing, home care, customer service but not good in things like science or perhaps politics, where decisions should be made on logic and cost benefit analysis. Men are 56.6% thinkers so if thinking equates to rational logic, men are more likely to make better decisions.
They’re also the worst hypocrites: always silent about the way women are treated in Muslim hell-holes and aboriginal communities and they actively hate strong conservative women like Pauline, Jacinta, Meloni, Candace Owens. And look at the disparity between how Melania was treated and how absolute skanks like Pelosi and the rest of the demorat women (sic) are given free passes.
So, I guess it’s not a male female thing but the old leftie conservative distinction.
Just look at how nasty all the politics have become since the women ( bullied ) their way into what was mens territory ??? Julia Gillard attacking Tony Abbot and thats was okay ? The Nutty Greens with Young and Thorpe , Penny Wong , Julie Bishop and good old Gladys in NSW and The Pig with Lip Stick in QLD all hiding behind their gender and if a man questions them they are called sexist pigs . The only exception in Australia is Pauline Hanson and Jacinta Price and perhaps a couple of state back benchers that all have erase their stripes based on their merit not their gender . But in Italy right the new PM has more balls than a Gay Mardi Gras and she would put many men to shame. The fact is men make decisions using logic where as women use emotion .
I agree with that comment, most, certainly not all women MP are trouble makers, and yes if they don’t like or understand what is said these women cry racist or sexiest, the Greens are the worst,
Great article. The premise put to leave ‘chromosones at the door’ when entering parliament is the most sage advice given to MP’s in recent memory. Keep writing author.
I second that.
Well, I’d like more like Jacinta Price and a whole lot less of the crazy green witches.
I second that comment well & truly