Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I actually hadn't intended to speak on this motion, but, having listened to the speakers on the other side, I thought it would be appropriate for me to put on the record some positions that I have long held in this place. If you can just bear with me while I am briefly self-indulgent, I graduated from university with a degree in mechanical engineering, which I am incredibly proud of, and I have always considered myself to be an engineer first and foremost. Of course, back then there were significantly fewer women undertaking engineering studies than there are now. There's been some movement but clearly not enough.

I have spent my entire life working in male dominated industries and fighting to make sure that women are treated equally and given the opportunities that boys and men have. That was clearly a much easier task in engineering because, if you could do the work, it was not an issue. When you went onto the factory floor, you were treated very equally based on your ability to do the job. As I moved through my second career, which was in industrial relations, I experienced similar issues to those I had experienced in engineering, where, as long as I could do the job, I was generally accepted and allowed to do what I needed to do.

My third career has been—is—politics. When I first was elected as the member for McPherson, there were clearly discussions about making sure that there was greater representation of women in parliament, and issues of quotas or targets have been discussed by the coalition for many, many years. Initially I have to say: I have always been opposed to quotas, because I never wanted to be considered to have been appointed into a role for any reason other than my ability to do the job.

What I have seen over the last decade at least has made me soften my views on opposing quotas. My concern is that the parliament of Australia needs to be a parliament that truly reflects the people of Australia, and that means that there are a number of groups, for want of a better way of describing them, that need representation within the parliament. One significant group is women, and, when I look at this side of the House and I look at the female representation that we have here, I am absolutely convinced that we need to do better. We need to make sure that we are doing all that we can to promote this as a workplace that is desirable for women to enter. We need to promote it, from the coalition's point of view, in my view, as a welcoming place for women to be part of.

Historically, we have always been of the view that you get preselected based on merit, but sometimes you look around and you think, 'Well, maybe merit only applies in certain circumstances!' and that, basically, 'merit' and the appointment of people 'on merit' are often used to stop women from progressing. So what I would like to see is that there is an openness to and an understanding of the issues that we face. One of those is to make sure that we recognise that there is a need to ensure that we have more women sitting in parliament.

I have stated publicly on many occasions that I think that the preselection processes of my own party need to be looked at to make sure that there is opportunity for all people to put their hands up to be preselected as a member of this parliament, and to represent a political party if they choose to do so, or, if they choose, to be an Independent. What I have said before and I say again is that, if we want to make change here, we cannot simply cross our fingers and hope that things are going to change without us taking positive action, because doing that in the past has been an abject failure.

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