David Speirs’ leadership of the SA Liberal Party has been weakened further after his own party defied his call to preselect a woman to replace the retiring Stephen Wade.
Last night, the Liberal Party preselected Ben Hood to fill the vacant Legislative Council seat. This is despite Speirs publicly stating he wanted a woman to fill the spot.
In January, media reported “Speirs wants a woman to replace retiring veteran”. He told InDaily:
“Of course, I am on the public record very strongly desiring to modernise the Liberal Party, to reinvigorate it and to see female representation increase.”
It’s a case of déjà vu for Speirs, who publicly backed a woman candidate for the seat of Bragg last year, only for the Liberals to preselect a man to replace Vickie Chapman.
Despite Speirs’ publicly stated desire for more women in the party, the Liberals have preselected two men and no women to fill vacancies since he became leader.
Indeed, the number of elected women in the Liberal Party has actually gone backwards under Speirs’ leadership.
By contrast, Federal Liberal Leader Peter Dutton publicly stated he wanted a woman to fill a recent vacancy in Victoria and the Liberal Party duly preselected a woman.
The Liberal Party only has two women in the House of Assembly, compared with Labor’s 14.
In July last year, Speirs established a taskforce to increase female representation in the Liberal Party.
The taskforce was supposed to report back before the end of last year but it has been repeatedly delayed.
Quotes
Attributable to Stephen Mullighan
It is remarkable there are now more people with the last name Hood in Parliament than there are Liberal women in the House of Assembly.
David Speirs has talked a lot about increasing female representation in the Liberal Party, but his leadership is clearly too weak to make it happen.
Remarkably, the Liberals actually have fewer women in Parliament now than when David Speirs’s became leader – and they were coming off a low base.
David Speirs’ can’t use the lame excuse that this is how the Liberal Party works – after all, his Federal counterpart Peter Dutton publicly stated he wanted a woman to fill a recent vacancy and that is exactly what he got.
If David Speirs is too weak to lead the SA Liberal Party, how on earth could he ever lead South Australia.
