HAYLEY SORENSEN

groups. But it was by women she was liked best.

Her popularity with women alone would have given the Liberal Party at least a slim chance against Labor at the next election. But that counted for nothing in that party room meeting.

The message sent to voters – all voters, but particularly women – was that what they wanted didn’t matter.

In the spiteful hellscape that is the ruins of Australian parliamentary democracy, our leaders were more concerned with revenge than with even keeping their own jobs.

In the wash-up since the vote, we’ve been told Bishop was overlooked because she was too similar to Turnbull, too moderate to appease the right wing of the party, not because of her biology.

That’s not true. The failure by the party to consider her as a genuine leadership contender — not just on Friday but for the decade before that — has everything to do with the fact she is a woman.

The installation of Morrison and Frydenberg – the architects of the company tax cuts and the national energy guarantee which brought down Turnbull – showed this was never about policy or even ideology. It’s been 116 years since women were given suffrage in Australia in 1902 but the conservative side of politics appear not to have noticed.

“The message sent to voters — all voters, but particularly women — was that what they wanted didn’t matter”

The Liberals, National and the Territory’s CLP have all shown again and again they have a problem with women. Less than a quarter of federal Liberals in Parliament are women.

In his erratic, buzzwordladen first speech as primeminister-elect which spanned immigration, rugby league loyalties and respect for parking by-laws, Morrison took a moment to pay tribute to Bishop’s “rock star” contribution.

But in Morrison’s eulogy, her work as foreign minister was given equal billing to her presence on Twitter and Facebook. It was a telling end to Bishop’s 11 years as second in command to men and service to a party which didn’t deserve her.

Hayley Sorensen is a regular Sunday Territiorian columnist