Senator Jane Hume, the frontrunner to replace outgoing Industrial Relations Minister Kelly O’Dwyer, has ruled out a tilt for the lower house, leaving the door open for a new candidate to take the coveted seat.

Senator Hume said while she was “very flattered and gratified” for the encouragement from within the party to run for preselection for Ms O’Dwyer’s Melbourne seat of Higgins, she wasn’t ready to walk away from her work in the Senate.

“Everything I want to achieve I can do from the Senate,” she told ABC’s Radio National on Monday.

“I did think long and hard about it, but I think the power of the Senate is greatly underestimated.”

Ms O’Dwyer has announced she will quit politics at the next election to spend more time with her family and try for a third child.

Senator Hume hopes the minister’s replacement is a woman.

“We have an incredible depth of female talent in our party and particularly around the seat of Higgins,” she said.

“There have been a number of names floated, many of whom I know personally and really, really like, and I would love to see them get an opportunity to step up and add strength and depth to our firepower.”

However, she said quotas are not the answer to help boost the numbers of women in the party.

“Liberal Party members do not like being told what to do. In our very nature we dislike that command and control, authoritarianism of the Labor Party,” she said.

“That’s why we feel uncomfortable with the idea of quotas as a solution.”

If Ms O’Dwyer’s successor fails to win at the next federal poll, the Liberals could be left without any Victorian women in the House of Representatives.

But Senator Hume says the party doesn’t have a problem with women.

“In fact, it has advanced the cause of women,” she said.

“It respects women, empowers women. It doesn’t patronise women.”

Although Ms O’Dwyer holds the blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins by eight per cent, Senator Hume says the election contest will be an “uphill climb” due to a shift in sentiment.

The federal election is expected in mid-May.

-with AAP