Former Liberal MP Jenny Ware says her party must implement gender quotas for candidates for public office, warning the opposition “cannot return to government” without fielding candidates who better reflect the wider community.
Ware, who lost his Hughes seat at the 2025 election, said it was “deeply shameful” that the Liberal Party executive had not published its own review of the electoral annihilation, which was then tabled in parliament by Anthony Albanese this week.
The review found urgent change was needed in the party, Ware said. He accused some in the Liberal party room of having “wasted” 10 months destabilizing former leader Sussan Ley rather than acting on the review’s findings and formulating new policy, and said it was vital the party got more involved with women and multicultural Australia.
“The Australian people have told us that they don’t like the way the Liberal Party is. They don’t like, in general, the candidates we put forward,” Ware told Guardian Australia.
“I think the time has come for us, at the federal level, to have quotas. Even if it is only for the next two elections, even if we say that we are not going to consolidate them in the longer term. But now we are at a critical point, and we, as a political party, have one task, and that is to win elections.”
Sign Up: AU Breaking News Email
Ware was first elected in 2022, beating Hughes by a 57-43 margin, but was unexpectedly unsuccessful in 2025; his New South Wales seat was not on the list of target seats for any of the major parties, and one Labor activist reportedly branded his victor David Moncrieff an “accidental” winner.
He claimed that Liberal losses in the metropolitan seats of Menzies, Sturt and Banks, and their failure to win now Teal seats such as Bradfield, Kooyong and Wentworth, were due “to the federal campaign” led by Peter Dutton. In particular, Ware said the unpopular push to end work-from-home rules for public servants “killed me” at Hughes, and lamented the lack of policies on elder or child care, which she said could have helped garner support from families and working women.
Ware said he did not want his comments to be perceived as “sour grapes” but said the Liberal Party needed to change its approach.
Ware now sits on the board of Crohn’s Colitis Australia, as well as doing policy work in education, and will soon launch his own law firm. He visited Parliament this week and said the difference between Labor and Coalition seats was stark. There are only five liberal women in the House of Representatives of 28 deputies, after Ley’s resignation; while the Labor group is made up of more than half women.
“I saw contemporary and representative Australia on the Labor side… a diverse group in terms of age demographic, multicultural backgrounds, indigenous Australians and diversity of religions,” Ware said.
“I turned the mirror on us, on our side, and saw mostly middle-aged Caucasian men with a handful of middle-aged Caucasian women… I didn’t see any real multicultural diversity. I also didn’t see much age diversity, and that doesn’t reflect modern Australia. We have never been less representative of Australians than the Liberal Party is currently in the House of Representatives.”
The NSW Liberal state council meets on Saturday for the first time since the review was made public, where the division will elect a new executive. Ware said he hopes the new executive will be open to considering quotas for future elections.
“The way we have behaved in the past – not selecting female candidates for winnable seats, not selecting diverse candidates, not having policies – we have shown that that has not worked. The Labor Party, on the other hand, has had quotas for 20 years,” he said.
“It has been proven. They have won two consecutive elections and have increased their majority. Now is the time, the Liberal Party must also do the same. Otherwise, we will not be able to return to government.”
“Almost a year has already been wasted, bringing down the first female federal Liberal leader instead of coming together and using the time to talk to Australians and develop policy for the 2028 election.”
