Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Gender and sexuality in Australian politics
andonemanintheHouse. 74 One of the Greens’ five senators (Senator Janet Rice)
identifies as LGBTIQ+ and is the Greens member with portfolio responsibilities for
LGBTIQ+ issues.
If parliaments are the formal venues for democratic representation, ‘the
ministry [Cabinet] is the apex of political power’. 75 Women’s representation in
Cabinet has increased from no women in federal or state/territory Cabinets until
1947 76 to around 26 per cent at the federal level (under a Coalition government in
2018), 77 after highs of 30 per cent under the Rudd Labor government between July
and September 2013 and 27 per cent under the Turnbull Coalition government in
2016–17. 78 These are small numbers overall: only two women held federal Cabinet
positions before 1983, and until 1996 there was only ever one woman in Cabinet
at a time. 79 Labor governments at the state level (Victoria and Queensland) have
recently achieved 50 per cent representation in Cabinet.
Jennifer Curtin observes that party discipline has very much limited opportunities
for Liberal Party feminists to act as part of a broader non- or cross-party
feminist agenda. The ability of women ministers in the Australian conservative
parties to substantively represent women’s issues is, in many ways, hidden due to
the expectations of Cabinet confidentiality. 80
Political parties and quotas
Political parties have been both a key barrier to the representation of women
and LGBTIQ+ people and a site in which people have organised for better
representation. As Manon Tremblay concludes, ‘of all the cultural, socioeconomic
and political factors affecting the election of women to legislative assemblies,
parties are surely the most influential variable’. 81
WhileresearchonthepreselectionofLGBTIQ+peopleislacking,scholars
have confirmed global trends in which parties tend to place women candidates
lower down party lists, nominate proportionally fewer women for safe seats and
be less likely to preselect women than men as candidates for single-member
electorates. 82 These trends are also evident in Australia. Since party preselection
is generally the necessary first step towards election to parliament, parties have a
major role in hindering or facilitating women’s representation.
In response to this, feminists and their allies have pushed for quotas to improve
representation of women in parliament. More recently, quotas for LGBTIQ+ people
74 Williams and Sawer 2018.
75 Moon and Fountain 1997.
76 AEC 2015b.
77 RMIT/ABC 2018.
78 RMIT/ABC 2017.
79 RMIT/ABC 2017.
80 Curtin 2014, 152.
81 Tremblay 2008, 234.
82 Tremblay 2008.
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