Warren Entsch lashes out at preselection defeat of assistant minister
Veteran Liberal MP Warren Entsch has branded the preselection defeat of assistant minister Jane Prentice a "bloody disgrace" and called on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to intervene and save her.
Ms Prentice, the assistant minister for social services and disability services, was beaten by Brisbane city councillor Julian Simmonds, her former staffer, in a preselection contest for the safe Liberal-National Party seat of Ryan over the weekend.
"I am profoundly disappointed that she has lost preselection," Mr Entsch told ABC radio. "She has been an outstanding contributor, she has been voted for regularly by her constituents."
Asked if he wanted the Prime Minister and federal leadership of the Liberal Party to intervene, he said: "I would like to see that happen. What has happened with Jane is a bloody disgrace."
Mr Entsch said the ouster "sends a very, very bad message with regards to women in politics in Queensland" and argued Ms Prentice didn't deserve it.
"Here you have a situation where the state party has sat back and done nothing and allowed this to happen. You're not going to get me defending it any shape or form."
While Ms Prentice's defeat has renewed focus on the low level of female representation in the Liberal Party, senior members of the Turnbull government are defending the preselection process.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said he was "personally very disappointed about Jane's loss" but expressed optimism that women were coming through the pipeline, pointing to the recent selection of Queensland senator Amanda Stoker to replace George Brandis and Georgina Downer's nomination to be the candidate in the Mayo byelection.
Currently, just over 20 per cent of Liberal MPs are women. In the National Party, women make up 14 per cent.
On Saturday, Mr Simmonds defeated Ms Prentice, 256 votes to 103. The challenge occurred amid an apparent disagreement on the timing of an already-agreed upon handover of the seat between the mentor and protege. Ms Prentice reportedly believed the transfer was to happen after she served another term.
Treasurer Scott Morrison said the Liberal-National Party in Queensland, where the two Coalition partners are formally merged, was a rank-and-file organisation that made its own decisions.
"Canberra shouldn't be messing in the affairs of Queensland. That's not how our party operates," Mr Morrison said.
On Sunday, the Treasurer said he had personal sympathy for Ms Prentice but said politics was "a contestable process and in the Liberal Party there are no quarantines on that".
Michelle Landry, a Nationals-aligned Queensland MP, criticised the developments, saying: "We've hardly got any federal females in Queensland in the government and one has been pushed aside by a young male."
Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson said an increase in women "would be a fundamentally good thing on the Liberal side of politics" but rejected calls for quotas.
"I'm against quotas on a practical level because quotas work when you have a very rigid factional system where you can allocate out positions and everybody takes responsibility for making sure those quotas are filled. In the Liberal Party, we have this thing called democracy, where party members get to make decisions based on what they think is in the best interest of their community," he told Sky News.