Julie Bishop Announces She Will Quit Politics At The Next Election

As Julie Bishop announces she will not recontest her seat at the next election, we look back at her leadership advice: “If you’re trying to be a man, it’s a waste of a woman.”

By Lara Robertson

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As Julie Bishop announces she will not recontest her seat at the next election, we look back at her leadership advice: “If you’re trying to be a man, it’s a waste of a woman.”

By Lara Robertson

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Former Liberal deputy leader and foreign minister Julie Bishop announced today that she will not be re-contesting her Western Australian seat of Curtin at the next election, effectively ending her decades-long political career.

Bishop told Parliament she hopes her seat will be filled by a woman, hinting at the Liberal party’s highly publicised struggles with gender diversity, after the recent resignations of Liberal MPs Julia Banks and Kelly O’Dwyer.

Bishop spoke of the time she was instructed to change her appearance after becoming Minister for Aged Care in 2003. “I got a phone call from a senior male member of the then-Prime Minister’s staff. He said ‘Okay Julie, out with the power suits, no more corporate lawyer image, you’re now the Minister for Aged Care, I wanna see cardigans and frocks.’ I obliged, and then after a while I thought ‘This isn’t me, why am I dressing like somebody else, I need to be myself.’”