• Marian Sawer

08 February 2010 If the Liberal Party did more to assist the entry of more talented women, it might assist in the rebuilding of the party, writes Marian Sawer in this book review for the Australian Review of Public Affairs

THERE HAVE always been brave women among Liberal politicians – from Florence Cardell-Oliver in 1939, the sole parliamentary voice against banning advertising of contraceptives in Western Australia, to Judi Moylan and Senator Judith Troeth standing up to the Howard Government’s demonising of asylum seekers.

It is often said there are not enough serious books about conservative politics. Margaret Fitzherbert is making a serious contribution to remedying this deficiency, at least in relation to Liberal women. This book is a history commissioned by the Menzies Research Centre (the Liberal Party think tank) and written by a Liberal Party member and former ministerial staffer with serious political aspirations. Only last year, Fitzherbert challenged a sitting member for preselection in a safe Victorian seat.

Fitzherbert established her credentials as an historian of women within the party with her earlier book Liberal Women: Federation to 1949. The current book takes the story up to ‘women of the Turnbull era’—an unfortunate subtitle, suggesting limited shelf life. But the book itself has the virtues as well as the vices of an insider account by someone with both good connections and continuing political ambitions. It provides a largely reliable and well-researched history of Liberal women and women’s policy from the perspectives of Liberal politicians, even if it rarely moves beyond these perspectives to attempt broader analysis...

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