Sunday
12 June 2022 marked 120 years since Australian women gained the right to vote
in federal elections, following the passage of the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (Franchise Act). The Act extended the franchise to
‘persons not under twenty-one years of age whether male or female, married or
unmarried’. The Act also gave women the right to stand as candidates in federal
elections. However, the Act also denied the right to vote to people of
non-European backgrounds. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, both
women and men, unless they were eligible to vote under state legislation. Australia
became the first country in the world to give most women both the right to vote
and the right to run for parliament. New Zealand women gained the right to vote
in 1893, but not the right to stand as candidates.
By
June 1902, women were already eligible to vote in
South Australia (since 1894), and Western Australia (since 1899). The New South
Wales (NSW) Legislative Assembly followed in August 1902, then the Tasmanian
House of Assembly in 1903, Queensland in 1905, and Victoria in 1908.
While
the Bill had aimed to extend the franchise to Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples and to those who were then referred to as ‘coloured people’
from overseas, it was amended to exclude ‘aboriginal natives of Australia,
Asia, Africa or the Islands of the Pacific’ from being placed on the electoral
roll, unless entitled under Section 41 of the Constitution. It would be another
60 years before all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were able to
enrol and vote at federal elections, following the 1962 amendment of the Commonwealth
Electoral Act 1918.
The
first federal election at which women in Australia were able to exercise their
rights to vote and to stand as candidates was held on 16 December 1903. Four
women contested that election: Selina Anderson
(later Siggins), who ran for the House of Representatives in NSW; and Senate
candidates Vida Goldstein in
Victoria (for whom the electoral division of Goldstein is
named), and Nellie Martel and Mary Moore-Bentley (later Ling) in NSW. They were the
first women nominated for election to any national parliament in what was then
the British Empire. All four women ran as independent candidates. None were
elected.
Selina
Anderson, the first woman to run for the Australian House of Representatives,
had originally intended to run for the Senate. In 1904, she sued a shopkeeper for defamation,
claiming that remarks he had made about her had prevented her from standing for
the Senate describing her as a woman of 'libidinous and licentious nature and
disposition'. Her case was unsuccessful. This may sound familiar in the wake of
recent revelations about the treatment of women in politics,
including those detailed in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2021
report Set the Standard.
The
first woman elected to an Australian state parliament, Edith Cowan, was
elected to Western Australia’s Legislative Assembly in 1921. However, it was not until 1943 that
the first women, Enid Lyons in
the House of Representatives and Dorothy Tangney in
the Senate, were elected to Australia’s federal parliament. Enid Lyons was also
the first woman appointed to the ministry, becoming Vice President of the
Executive Council in 1949. The first woman to administer a Commonwealth
department was Annabelle Rankin, as
Minister for Housing from 1966.
The first Indigenous member of any
Australian parliament, Neville Bonner, was
appointed to the Senate in 1971. The first Indigenous member of the House of
Representatives, Ken Wyatt, was
elected in 2010, also the first Indigenous person to hold assistant
ministerial, ministerial, and Cabinet roles in the Australian Government (from
2015, 2017, and 2019, respectively). The first Indigenous woman, Nova Peris, was
elected to the Senate in 2013. In 2016, Linda Burney was
the first Indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives. In 2022 she
became the first Indigenous woman to hold a federal ministry and to be
elevated to Cabinet.
In
2014 the 100th woman in
the House of Representatives, Terri Butler,
entered parliament, 71 years after Enid Lyons. In 2018 the 100th woman in
the Senate (and the first female Muslim senator), Mehreen Faruqi,
entered parliament. In 2019 women and men were, for the first time, equally represented in the Senate, a
milestone that is yet to be reached in the House of Representatives. While
subject to final confirmation, indications are that in the 47th Parliament, 57
per cent of senators and 38 per cent of members of the House of Representatives
will be women.
