The government’s new Innovation Minister says the issue of gender imbalance in Liberal politics is a major talking point within his party since the announcement of Malcolm Turnbull’s Cabinet.

Speaking on Q&A on Monday night, Craig Laundy first defended the government’s position in answer to an audience member’s question on why the current government includes the lowest number of women in 20 years.

“Look, you obviously can’t dictate at a general election who retains their seat and who doesn’t,” Mr Laundy said. “That’s the first thing, and we did lose some amazing MPs across the board, but a lot of them were female.”

“Now, we as a party need to, and we have been, speaking about this internally over the last week …We need to come up with a plan.” 

Mr Laundy said that, unlike the Labor Party, the Coalition does not believe in quotas and selects women for preselection on their merits.

But he did acknowledge more needed to be done to ensure women were better represented in Parliament.

“We’re not like the Labor Party in so far as we’re not unionised, backed by unions and factions and what have you,” he said. “We are genuine grassroots rank and file … and one of the challenges you heard spoken about coming out of the party room … this week, was how we reinvigorate that membership.

“I think you have weightings attached to females. It might be that sort of structure where there is a weighting attached. These are all things that we are discussing internally now.”
Innovation Minister Craig Laundy

“What we need to do is find out whether it is that you have targets that are binding over time … in so far as your preselection.”