Julie Bishop Went On ’60 Minutes’ Last Night, Has No Fucks Left To Give
She reckons Parliament is full of school kids, which is a massive insult to school kids tbh.
Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop called for gender targets and slammed her party’s recent leadership spill in an interview with 60 Minutes last night.
Bishop repeated her support for gender targets as a method for achieving gender parity in Parliament, citing her experience in cabinet as a reason for change.
“I have been in a cabinet where I was the only female,” she said, recalling her time under Tony Abbott’s leadership. “And then five female colleagues joined me and they had vastly different discussions and debates.”
“I believe that targets are an appropriate mechanism, it’s not the only mechanism but I have seen it work elsewhere,” she added.
Bishop may have been nodding in Labor’s direction, where two decades of gender targets have contributed towards to 48 percent of their federal politicians being female. Of the Liberal party’s federal politicians, only 24 percent are female, and that number looks likely to drop after the next election.
The Liberal party is currently embroiled in a debate over gender quotas, with many female MPs calling for them to become party policy, while male MPs resist. What a surprise.
In our extra minutes, Daryl Karp, director of the Museum of Australian Democracy points to an alarming decline in Australian’s satisfaction with democracy: down from 82 per cent in 2007 to 41 per cent now. 60 Minutes looked at what’s gone wrong. https://t.co/7SByfX6DAU
— Chris Uhlmann (@CUhlmann) September 23, 2018
Bishop added that political standards had deteriorated so much that the public views politicians as schoolchildren.
“There’s far too much throwing of insults and vicious behaviour, name-calling and the like. And the public see that as no better than schoolchildren. In fact, not as well-behaved as schoolchildren,” she said.
Bishop ran in the recent leadership spill that saw Scott Morrison installed as prime minister. She received just 11 votes from the 85-person party room and bowed out, leaving the second round of voting to be contested between Morrison and Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton.
As the bar for knifing leaders is lowered again it fuels the perception that politicians spend all their time on gamesmanship and winning the day in Question Time. #60Mins pic.twitter.com/mFQP0IfDHi
— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) September 23, 2018
And Bishop said that Australia’s coup culture — which has lead to five prime ministers in six years — is leaving us with a bad global reputation.
“There have been some rather unkind comments about Australia being the Italy of the South Pacific and the coup capital of the world,” Bishop said.
Ouch — Italy has had four PMs since 2014, and colourful, controversial and corrupt former leader Silvio Berlusconi is tipped to have a run at the top job again in the near future.
The interview with 60 Minutes has reportedly angered some Liberal MPs, who believe it will damage the government. But Bishop is on the backbench now, where she’s free to speak her mind. And it looks like she plans to do just that.