"Tony Abbott didn’t want women in his senior ministry, former deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop claims
Former foreign affairs minister recalls ‘ferocious’ discussion with new PM about having only one woman in 20-member cabinet.
Julie Bishop – the only woman in Tony Abbott’s 2013 federal cabinet – believes that the then prime minister really wanted an all-male senior ministry and only included her because her elected position as deputy leader meant he could not avoid it. The former foreign affairs minister remains convinced that Abbott’s preference was to have no women at all.
“I wasn’t appointed by Tony, I was there in my own right as the elected deputy leader, so they had no choice but to have me in cabinet,” Bishop says in a lengthy podcast interview with Helen McCabe, founder of professional development and advocacy organisation Future Women.
In the podcast, part of a series of eight with high-profile women, Bishop says she challenged his decision, not just because of “the optics” but also on behalf of “the other women who were perfectly capable of holding a cabinet position, if not more capable than many of those men chosen”. But she says she chose not to express her concern publicly out of a mix of cabinet solidarity and self-preservation. "
Yes indeed. One wonders why being male was a pre-requisite for the job under the Abbott government.
