LIBERALS: WHAT HAPPENED AND HOW TO WIN BACK WOMEN

By Ben Pattison

BACKGROUND:

In aftermath of the 2025 Federal Election, where winning 34.6% of the popular vote resulted in a landslide win for the Labour party, I’ve been watching closely the largely ‘Groupthink’ commentary on the Liberal Party’s dismal performance.

All the same talking points have been doing the rounds and rather than chiming in on that battered, swampy terrain I want to instead focus on the now-popular notion that ‘The Liberal Party has a Problem with Women’.

I’m guessing you’ve heard that phrase. We all hear it. We’re all told it – a lot. And from my analysis – regardless of the truth – that perception is becoming widespread and has to be quickly reversed should the party wish to regain relevance. The task of how to dispel that myth is what I will draft below in a moment’s time.

Anybody who’s been in any institution – corporate, community, religious or otherwise – knows that certain kinds of individuals gravitate towards certain roles and positions. Be they male or female, certain characters crave certain careers. We all know these types and we have some estimation of what drives them at a cellular level.

Here in the home context of Western Australia, until recently we had an all-female leadership team: Michaelia Cash as WA Federal Leader, Libby Mettam as Leader of the WA Party and Caroline Di Russo as WA President. This fact completely contradicts the casual generalisation that the party has a problem with women.

Surely, one would think, this is a walking and talking advertisement that women can achieve rank in the Liberal Party? Surely it would be lauded by the media? Nope – and that’s because they only want women with the ‘right’ kind of views. Was Jacinta Nampijinpa Price championed as a strong, empowered aboriginal woman when she recently ran for Federal Deputy leader? Absolutely not. Are you seeing a trend here?

In terms of getting pre-selected for parliament – the precursor to getting elected – the Liberal Party runs a largely democratic process where any member can put their hand up to run. They then have to work to gain support of the division’s pre-selectors (again, any member of longer than 6 months can become one of these) and then demonstrate their political and/or oratory abilities addressing the assembled members on the night of the vote.

To my understanding, the Labour Party does not have this mechanism. Instead, parliamentary candidates are handpicked by the party’s executive, which tends to be made up of prominent party people from the various internal factions.

So, while neither of these methods is perfect and both are ripe for exploitation by certain individuals seeking to exert control and influence, it’s abundantly clear which is more democratic – and meritocratic – than the other.

But… None of that actually matters when we have a deficit of good policy ideas and a seemingly terminal brand problem.

ORIGINS OF BRAND PROBLEM

I’ll be mercifully blunt in compiling these factors so we can crack on to the cure further below.

1.    Acceptance of Far-Left thinking as Mainstream.

There’s old phrase that goes something along the lines of ‘Conservatives think Socialists simply have the wrong ideas. Socialists think conservatives are evil’. What that phrase broadly summarises is the fact that much of the commentary against traditional, conservative or even classical liberal expressions of thought is emotional in nature and often in bad-faith. Indeed, the very term ‘Conservative’ is now pejorative and almost a smear. This is not the forum for expanding into the Hard Left’s long march through the institutions, but it’s quite clear that since the 1960s a certain philosophical/political worldview has descended upon almost every sphere of public life and is eating away into the suburbs in its latest guise, called ‘wokery’. Unfortunately, the corporate world is all but enthral.  Liberals need to remember that the vast majority of the nation has been hoodwinked and corralled into accepting many assumptions due to fear of ostracising. They’re ravenous for authentic debate and analysis and tired of fakery and phoniness.

2.    Persistent Negative Media Commentary.

Parable time: If a kid gets bullied day after day in the schoolyard, called all sorts of names denigrating his character and cruel rumours are spread about him, eventually two things happen. Firstly, the rest of school believes the rumours. Finally, the kid himself starts to believe he’s worthless and doubts his very existence. For those who don’t understand, this means that the Media and the voices it amplifies have been telling the women of Australian for so long the Liberals have a problem with them, that they start to believe it as true regardless of facts almost through familiarity. Isolated soundbites get blown out of proportion with glee, feeding the furnace.

3.    Lack of Policies distinctively directed at Women’s Health, Mental Health, Economic Advancement and the Aspiration of Families.

This is the big one – optics are everything and getting a temporary 25 Cents of a Litre of Petrol just wasn’t going to get the women of Australia excited, let alone much of its menfolk. You have to tackle the issues that people care about head on. You ask women what’s important to them individually and you join the dots.

 

4.    Failure to Shape the Narrative in the Media.

Isn’t it funny how while we live in the information age – the age of quantity where everything has to be measured – that facts matter so little in political debate nowadays?

There are heavy biases against ‘conservative’ voices in the media that are simply allowed to run riot, unpoliced. Where are the Coalition’s warriors? Is nobody game enough to give it back as good as you get it? Is it so uncouth to fight the culture wars that you’d rather cower than risk copping the flak? That you’d rather just stick to economic talking points and fail at them too?

Whoever sculpts the narrative maintains a competitive advantage.

PRACTICAL POLICIES: 

Below I’ve drafted together 12 election-winning policies that not only appeal to Women's sense of being left out of the picture, but they'll actually appeal to Liberal Values too. 

Before we start, I'm not going to tell you how to pay for any of the below, yet. Right now, it's important to let ideas germinate and blossom.

It's ideas that inspire people.

The details and costings must obviously stack up, as the Liberal Party must maintain its historical (but not present) reputation as sound economic managers. Now though, is the time for brainstorming what's electorally, ideologically, morally and emotionally imperative. 

1.    Electoral Imperative: 

Change Perception - Destroy the perception that the Liberal Party does not care about Gender Equality, Women or Women's Interests. 

Neutralise Labor - Destroy the narrative that only Labor makes Women a priority and puts in place practical measures to help everyday women economically, socially and medically. Make their assertions a ‘furphy’.

2.    Ideological Imperative: 

Put in place policies that champion the individual and promote the family unit – this is a key ‘conservative’ principle and a core value of the Liberal Party.

3.    The Practical Imperative:

Australia’s birthrate is far below replacement level, let alone growth level, meaning we have to import greater numbers of workers. While social conventions have changed, the economic climate remains the largest influencing factor for couples having kids and raising large families.

Make Australia a Technological, IP Powerhouse - Let's use our human capital and really make the most of this 'knowledge economy'. 

4.    Moral Imperative: 

Rather than create policies that fit within the narrow confines of 'the system', opt rather for policies that innovate, speak to practical measures with tangible outcomes and put the 'common, greater good' at the heart of ideation. 

5.    Emotional Imperative: 

Sometimes it’s not what you say, it's how you say it. The Liberal Party's opponents are ravenous wolves and will use any opportunity to 'catch you out' or demonise. This is why you need bulletproof - and foolproof - policies and marketing campaigns that appeal to empathy and emotional intelligence. Most importantly, you can’t appear 'Employer' over 'Employee' or Labor will win every single time. 

PROSPECTIVE LIBERAL PARTY WOMEN’S POLICY PLATFORM:

1.    SUBSIDISE HOME CHILDCARE:

Right now external childcare is moderately subsidised by the Federal Government – but what about women – and families of course - who opt to look after their own kids?

Mothers often have to prematurely go back into the work force out of brute financial necessity, as well as wanting to return to work. The Cost-of-Living Crisis in Childcare exacerbates this, where women are often finding they go off to work for 3 days a week to pay the Government with one third of their income and child care investors with the other two thirds. Increasingly, women are going back into the workforce a mere 3 months after giving birth due to cost pressures.

Adopting a home childcare subsidy - as in for mothers and families looking after their own kids - means mothers can afford to stay home and rear their child in the critical formative months and years. This could be means-capped at a family income level for fairness.

This eliminates the cost-factor when deciding what’s right for families and they can focus on what best suits their child's developmental needs – whether they do their own childcaring or outsource it – balanced in line with their individual occupational desires. 

2.    INCENTIVISE LARGER FAMILIES’ ABOVE REPLACEMENT RATE:

I get it, life’s hard enough for people without children, let alone people with children. But a Tax deduction of 8% PA for family incomes per child for the 3rd, 4th and 5th child incentivises having children above the replacement rate at a time when the nation is screaming out for more kids under the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis, worker shortage, skyrocketing divorce rates, plummeting fertility and birth rates etc. Applicable for families earning $400,000 and under.  

3.    SUPER TOP-UPS FOR MOTHERS ON MATERNITY LEAVE AND REARING KIDS:

Women who are out of the workforce for longer periods of time raising kids naturally have a disadvantage in some sense, regarding their retirement earnings via superannuation. For some women, it’s an example of Men having it better or easier.

Pledge $5K in superannuation per year of Child Raising, capped at a maximum of 5 years total for the lifetime of the woman.

With the compounding effects of Superannuation through diligent investing, that modest sum would amount to a serious nest egg come retirement.

4.    FREE ANNUAL BREAST CANCER SCREENING FOR ALL WOMEN:

The leading cancer in Women under 40 is Breast Cancer. Currently, it's only free for Women over 40. Let thank sink in. What a no-brainer. Let's fix this quick. 

5.    $100 million funding per year for 5 years ($500m Total) to find a cure for ENDOMETRIOSIS. Some 10 Times the Current Investment. Public KPI tracking to ensure funds appropriately used.

Endo is an insidious, almost invisible disease that not only gives sufferers excruciating pain for decades of their lives, it can reduce fertility, induce poor mental health and even produce cancer. Current funding is inadequate and research for a cure or meaningful treatment is slovenly and archaic. We must fight to eradicate this terrible, often genetic condition.

6.    $100 million per year for 5 years ($500m Total) CERVICAL and OVARIAN CANCER elimination and other disorders. Some 10 Times the Current Investment. Public KPI tracking to ensure funds appropriately used.

These malignancies, while not as prevalent as Breast Cancer, still account for some 30% of all female-only cancers and produce untold misery on sufferers including confronting surgical interventions, infertility, pain and immobilisation. Efforts to eradicate these illness by 2035 must be accelerated if it is to be achieved. 

7.    10 DAYS ANNUAL REPRODUCTIVE LEAVE BY LAW:

Women should not have to use their 10 days Sick Leave when experiencing debilitating menstrual symptoms. It can be also used for chronic conditions, fertility treatments, preventative screenings, and related treatments.

8.    FREE IVF WHEN FIRST PAID ATTEMPT UNSUCCESSFUL:

People marrying later due to economic realities means women’s fertility windows are being constricted. Fertility across both sexes is being reduced by environmental and chemical factors, with everything from microplastics to food growing practices compounding the effects. This means IVF use is only going to increase and the market see’s huge $$$.

Roughly 50% of successful IVF births are achieved by having more than 2 or 3 cycles. At roughly $10,000 per cycle, this presents real financial pressures and stresses that work counterintuitively to providing an optimal stress level for conception. All successive IVF cycle attempts after the 1st should be free at the point of use. The first would require payment as demonstrating a degree of financial security is vital to bring a human into the world.

9.    WOMEN’S MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS DRIVE:

While it's true that 75% of all suicides in Australia are by Men and it’s true that more stigma surrounds Men's mental health, latest figures suggest that nearly 50% of women aged 16 to 24 are clinically recorded as suffering from mental health issues, such as depression or anxiety. Almost one quarter (1/4) of Australian Women between the ages of 16-85 have been prescribed mental health related medication. We need a greater societal understanding for causes and cures of anxiety and depression, particular in younger females, and need to promote holistic, behavioural and situational therapies, not just medicinal 'quick fixes' that morph into long-term pharmaceutical reliance. 

10. DIVORCEES – OR PEOPLE OF ALL SEXES WHO HAVE NOT OWNED PROPERTY FOR 10 YEARS - CAN BE CONSIDERED FIRST HOME BUYERS AGAIN ACROSS ALL STATES FOR GRANTS AND LEGAL PURPOSES: 

When you're trying to get your life back together, you feel handicapped by the fact your purchasing power is often diminished. Throw in a housing crisis with price escalations and the fact you can’t access grants, better LVRs or lower deposit percentages, can all contribute to disadvantage and even homelessness. This disproportionally effects women.

11. HYBRID AND FLEXIBLE WORKING ORDAINED IN LAW AS ACCEPTABLE, INALIENABLE WORKING PRACTICE IN APPLICABLE ROLES. 

The Coalition's desire to curtail the federal Public Sector's ability to work from home at the last election was rightly taken by the media and twisted to appear as be applicable to all workers.

They should have seen that one coming. If a shark smells blood it will sink its teeth in where it can, right? But most illuminatingly it showed the lack of trust certain Old Schoolers place in their employees. As if, like school children, if staff aren't supervised or forced to suffer a 2-hour commute to work every day, clogging up the skies as well as the roads, they'll slack off and do the bare minimum. How infantilising. How patronising. 

Let's be honest here: most office jobs or white-collar roles are not Victorian Factory Lines where a specific number of bolts need to be put into a specific amount of iron sheets on a Steam Train assembly line and each take a specific amount of time to do. Most are now outcomes-focused rather than time-focused and as a result the individual should be given liberty to determine how best to get the required outcome as per their own time inputs. Put simply, it's about outputs, not inputs. 

Has anyone ever noticed how amazing it is to have a business day that starts at 8:30 and ends at 5pm while the School Day starts at 9am and ends at 3pm? If we want greater workforce participation by women - of which en masse it's motherhood that reduces workforce participation - then you need to get real. 

On another note, while detractors would erroneously claim it - there's no evidence whatsoever - that WFH reduces productivity. Consider too the productivity gained in people’s lives by not having to sit down in their cubical at 8:29 just to keep the boss happy? What about the societal productivity gained in community participation, mental and physical health etc. Remember, these are the same people that advocated for insane Open Plan office layouts and Hotdesking etc – obsolete ideas that work against behavioural science.

12. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:

Recently, governments have upped the ante regarding investment into reducing domestic violence, getting hard on offenders and providing care for victims. But we must do more. I would advocate for the creation of a new swathe Women's shelters to rolled out across the nation, free from administrative headaches for victims, geographically and strategically located. 

On a deeper note, and this is important, we need to sculpt the campaigning - the messaging - about domestic violence geared better around behavioural science. We need Men to be talking to Men in a Male - yes I said it - Male way. This has worked in the UK on recent campaigns and has been considered an effective new line of prevention. This means masculinising the commentary, not feminising. Women don’t want feminine Men anyway, they want men who can communicate openly and abundantly, remain emotionally stable in the face of conflict or adversity and, maybe even most of all, protect them while not stifling them.

This next point is even more controversial. We must work out a way to provide adequate distinction between healthy and normal conflict in relationships and what constitutes genuinely dangerous behaviour. This is the land of the subjective and that’s why it’s fraught with landmines – but tackle it we must in the pursuit of a practical, empirical truth. We must also look into the Family Law side of things and tweak to make it fairer, particularly when children are involved. 

NEXT STEPS: 

Critics of this piece will note its lack of subservience to 'Structural' issues. This is because that is language of the left and I will not utter it here. I don’t accept that one ideology can dictate the very language we use to discuss contentious and important topics. Many times, after intense scrutiny, a lot of the issues declared as ‘structural’ actually comes down to the individual, not the State, to diagnose and to intervene.

In fairness, you could say that women appear to be structurally locked out of STEM fields due to lower employment stats in those fields, but you could also say this is due to women's occupational and tertiary choices, based on their interests. 'Barriers' and stigmas can be broken down everywhere - but the evidence is that we are moving positively and quickly in the direction of a supremely non-gendered workforce in many areas, while some remain one-sided. Numbers, statistics etc don’t always paint the full picture. It’s the statistician, not the statistics themselves which decides how to paint the picture.

Take construction, perhaps the most traditionally masculine of all industries – with all the negative connotations, now welcomes women with open arms. In fact, often female apprentices will be sought out over male apprentices due to their developmental maturity in comparison to males of leaving-school age. Building companies will actively seek out women to manage multiple priorities due to their fantastic organisational abilities. How many Men honestly, each with a mother, grandmother, sister, wife or partner, would not honestly vouch for their unique strengths?

Often, we allow the outliers to dictate policy - the people who hoon on the roads and get into highspeed crashes often determine road speed reductions which affect everyone. While this can create an impression that action is being taken to address certain topics of concern, in reality it means the vast majority of people aren't getting a real voice in terms of policy as the focus is always on the loudest, angriest voices.

There will always be angry voices out there, but they can’t just be ignored, they need to be engaged and transformed through debating with them on the topics at hand with logic, emotional intelligence, ethical purity and resolve.

The Liberal Party will regain relevance with women by harnessing the power of the State to drive medical and technological innovation in women's health, reducing the burdens and impediments to workforce participation, and by encouraging and incentivising the having of children – the growing of families - to reduce reliance on immigration and to cement the notion of the family as being the bedrock of a successful and cohesive society.

Ultimately, the State is there to unlock the freedom of the individual – hence, I don’t see state intervention here as ‘Big State’ at all.   

Most of all, if the Liberal Party starts treating people as more than mere economic entities – as some more fiscal conservatives are wont to do - the electorate will respond favourably.

Why compete with Labour, the Teals and The Greens on who can repackage ‘wokery’ when you can fight them on the other flanks that don’t risk your very soul. Offer an alternative on all fronts and beat them at their own game on their home turf. What the Fiscal Right and their natural opponents the Hard Left have in common is that while they disagree on many topics, they tend to view individuals in mechanical, economical terms – as if we’re all just cogs in a machine. This has to end.

The truly conservative and liberal view, is that people are spiritual as well as biological beings – each with a spark of the creator inside us. We’re all morally equal due to the doctrine of the equality of souls – that we are all equally valuable because we are all created in the image of God. Many forget that even the very concept of human rights stems from this inalienable, ancient fact.

Should the Liberal Party adopt a policy platform in line with the above policy suggestions, society itself may just bloom ever more resplendently as we traverse the obstacles of life in the pursuit of meaning and happiness.