CANBERRA, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- One of the most senior female members of the Australian government has called for the nation's ruling party to implement quotas for female representation.
Sussan Ley, who has served as the Minister for Health, Minister for Sport and Minister for Aged Care in her 16 years as a Member of Parliament (MP), on Thursday night called for the Liberal Party to follow the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in introducing female quotas.
"We do need to do more to recruit female MPs without a doubt," she told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio.
"If you look at our party, the picture tells its own story.
"I've never been a fan of quotas, but I must say recently I've wondered whether we should consider them.
"In what context I'm not sure, but we don't have enough women. But the issue has to start long before you get to parliament."
Of the 85 current Liberal Party MPs, only 20, or 23 percent, are female. By comparison, 46 percent of ALP MPs are female; a figure that the party aims to raise to 50 percent by 2025.
As of February 2018, Australia ranked 50th in the world for female representation in parliament.
Ley's comments came the day after Julie Bishop, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs and deputy leader of the Liberal Party from 2007 until August 2018, decried parliament's culture of bullying.
In her first speech since resigning as a minister, Bishop said it was "unacceptable" that less than a quarter of Liberal Party MPs were female.
"It's not acceptable for our party to contribute to the fall in Australia's ratings from 15th in the world, in terms of female parliamentary representation in 1999, to 50th today. There's a lot to be done," she said on Wednesday.
Ley said though she had not experienced bullying in her political career, she believed that the party needed to implement a complaints process.
"I believe we as a party need to put processes in place so that those who are upset about behavior or feel there is bad behavior in their workplace have somewhere to go, and somewhere to express those views and have something done about them," she said.
