Election fallout reflects a changing nation — we need politicians to change with it

The nation's shifting core group has outgrown, outnumbered and outclassed the politicians still refusing to represent it, writes Zayda Dollie.

THE REAL VICTORY to come out of the 2025 Federal Election is the record number of women who will make up the nation’s new parliament.

It's a sign of the times, but it also marks a shifting voter base that has no qualms in swiping right on representatives for as long as it takes to find the right one.  

Out with the old, in with the newsflash 

Voters have elected at least* six women over their male counterparts to represent them for the first time in the House of Representatives.

Under the previous Government, 58 of the 151 members of the Lower House were women. This year, up to 16 new female contenders stood in the running for a seat, meaning women could have held an historic 74 seats in the House of Representatives.

Only half the Senate seats were up for re-election. Under the previous Government, 43 women held Senate seats and 44 women are forecast to still have one under the new Government.

Of the 76 seats in the Senate, women occupy over half of them.

Under newly elected Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, this ratio won't change. If anything, he is likely to inflate it.

The fact remains: Women constitute more than half of Australia’s Senate. This was the case under the Coalition Government and will remain the case under the new Labor Government.

Women will likely make up at least half the prime minister’s cabinet in this election cycle. In 2022, when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came into power the first time, he made a point of assigning senior positions to the 10 women in his cabinet. 

In 2022, he said:

This is the largest number of women who have ever served in an Australian Cabinet, with 10 women in the Cabinet. In addition to that, in terms of the Ministry, there are 13 women in the Ministry and 19 frontbenchers...

 

I think we have an overflow of talent on our side of the Parliament ... It is the most experienced incoming Labor Government in our history since Federation. 

Albanese is expected to unveil his ministry in the coming days — we will see whether the Prime Minister can top his own precedent.  

The young and the restless

Though votes are still being tallied, the 63 confirmed seats won by women will be the most we have seen in parliament under any government. This parliament will be our 48th.

In June 2024, there were 59 women in the House of Representatives and 43 women in the Senate.

At our highest levels of government, women are not underrepresented. In the Senate, they are the majority. The number has risen significantly in the last six years. More accurately, it has taken only two elections to get here.  

In 2019, there were 40 women in the House of Representatives and 32 women in the Senate. That lasted until 2022. Three years later and the number has gone up by almost a third.

The significance of the jump is lost when you try to measure social change in public sector time. To put it a different way: Before last week, there was exactly one female representative for Queensland in the Lower House. As of Saturday, there are six more.

It took one election to get us here. Voters only needed to be asked once.

The old and the dutiful

The most novel thing about this election was the inverted demographic structure of the voting bloc. This was the first time Gen Z and Millennials combined were said to exceed the number of Baby Boomers at voting polls.

The emphasis given to this novelty – that young people would become the dominant voters this election – has given those trying to exploit it acute tunnel vision.

It seems obvious that if young people were the key demographic during the election, they should qualify as the nation’s key demographic at all other times outside of that. 

The Liberal Party’s policies and the accompanying vacuous rhetoric are an affront to the young people, who outnumber them and will one day outlive them. 

During his campaign trail, a journalist asked Opposition Leader Peter Dutton whether he had policies for women on work and education.

She said:

In your own campaign launch speech, you mentioned women twice and that was in relation to how you protect them ...

 

When you speak about female-dominated industries like education, you talk about the work agenda — what are you offering modern working women?

Dutton answered:

I'm offering them the chance to get a home. 

 

... accessing super, that women who have had a really messy relationship breakup, who haven't had a home before or have no roof over their head with their kids, I want to provide that stability.

 

I've worked hard every day in this job to keep women safe and young girls and children safe.

At no point does Dutton mention work agenda or education in his answer. Dutton's talking points on women have been consistent, if not repetitive.

These aren't policies. These are views, where policies should be. Women in need of safety and security. Women in need of a protector to ward off the dangers their environment poses to them: homelessness, domestic violence, relationships.

Incidentally, these descriptions are not of women, either. They are descriptions of ideas about women. Dutton doesn't see women as people because he doesn't see them at all. It's not that women aren't equal — it's that they aren't real. To Dutton, they are an absraction.  

Children, in Dutton's world view, are a vulnerability — worthy of protection but not worthy of more. For the women who get put in the same basket as their children, the Opposition Leader could not sound more paternalistic.

Nothing could feel more condescending than a man, who will not shift his world view to include you in it. Not even when directly asked. 

The Coalition Government still sees itself as Australia’s key demographic and the nation’s dominant group — ignoring the reality of almost all other Australians before, during and after the election.

In terms of population size, currency and relevance to the public, the Liberal Party should be issued its correct label — a minority fringe group, at high risk of becoming further marginalised than it already is. 

Disservice station

Last Monday, two days after the election, Shadow minister and Nationals Leader Bridget McKenzie appeared on ABC’s Q+A.

She defended the Coalition’s policies in front of a live audience, claiming it had good policies but hadn't communicated those well enough to the public.

A young woman in the audience pushed back on the Senator's claim.

She said:

 “It’s interesting to hear those sentiments when we know that Peter Dutton visited 17 petrol stations along his campaign trail but at the same time didn’t release a single policy on women.”

Of all the responses a member of the Senate could come back with, it is baffling McKenzie opted for this one.

She said:

“So Genevieve, women also fill up the car. They also go to petrol stations.”

A statement like this does McKenzie a disservice. The problem is that it does a disservice to all women, everywhere, at the same time.

McKenzie concedes to the idea that women are living in a man's world because women also fill up the car and go to petrol stations, just like men. If a man's world can make concessions for women, why are they complaining? This is equality as per the Coalition's one-size-fits-men program.

Why would anyone agree to live in a world designed for someone else, with the odds stacked against them? Why would a woman consent to living in a world designed to harm her? Wouldn't she want to reshape it to suit her interests? Shouldn't that be expected since it was designed against her interests in the first place? 

Equality exists for the Liberals but only conceptually. They can't implement it. How could they? Their policies for women sound as invented as their ideas about them — hollow, but mostly, imaginary. They can't be applied to the real world. They'd have to reflect real life first.

Ideology doesn't translate well to the real world. That's what policy-making is for. That's why the public asks parties to list their policies, the ones designed to improve the real world. If a party can't name its policies because it has none to offer, we should be asking why that party still exists.

A political party that makes self-preservation its ultimate goal is doomed to death by a thousand rewrites. It's like AI model collapse – too many iterations of the same thing. A party that reproduces itself over and over again degenerates with every repeat. The party just corrupts itself with every rebirth, becoming less and less like the original. It never has anything new to say. 

If a party's political platform is anti-diversity, then it may as well brand itself as inbred. For a party that decides diversity is the new enemy, how will it receive new input? With no new input, the party denies itself the chance to ever correct itself, to learn by trial and error or to learn at all. It robs itself of the chance to improve on the past. Ultimately, it won't. 

Conservatives will not adapt or die because conservatives don't care about dying. Their mission is to last forever, not to live forever. Their legacy is their legacy, which sounds reductive because it is.

The centuries-old parties and their wisdomless words belong in a museum. They have no place in politics anymore.

They will get worse with every new cycle until we stop voting to keep them alive. 

*All figures quoted in this article are accurate as at the time of publication (AEC)

Zayda Dollie is an IA assistant editor who believes in the power of stories and in having female voices heard. You can follow her on Instagram @zayda_dollie_hendricks, X @ZaydaD or Bluesky @zaydadollie.