Page: 3583
The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS [7.51 p.m.]: The women of New South Wales gained the right to vote in 1902, but were not permitted to sit in Parliament until 1918. It was then another seven years until Nationalist Party candidate Millicent Preston-Stanley was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1925 by the people of the eastern suburbs. Obviously, she was the first woman to enter the New South Wales Parliament. She made a realistic comment about the impact she expected to have. She said:
I'm not fool enough to suppose my going into the House is going to make any sweeping alteration. The heavens won't fall because a woman's skirts rustle on the sacred benches, so long the sacrosanct seats of the lords of creation.
I read that because I want to refer to the web site dealing with women candidates for the New South Wales Parliament, which is an initiative of the Women's Archives Project organised through the National Foundation of Women utilising a grant from the Sesquicentenary Fund. Honourable members may have had the opportunity to attend the launch of that site during the various sesquicentenary celebrations. The site was launched by the Governor Marie Bashir. The grant was not enough to complete the project. So far it has dealt only with candidates for the Legislative Assembly. It is difficult to find many of those candidates, particularly those representing smaller parties. The web site is well worth looking at. It contains some fascinating information about the women elected to the Parliament. It is relatively easy to find information about the successful candidates. It is also contains fascinating information about the lives and careers of the women who were unsuccessful in their bid for a seat in this Parliament.
Last night I had the pleasure of hosting a function in the President's dining room to raise funds for the Australian Women's Archive Project so that the Putting Skirts on the Sacred Benches project can be continued. The aim is to fill in the gaps from the time when women first ran for Parliament. The site contains biographical information about 450 of the 763 women candidates who are listed. Last night's function was particularly interesting because we invited a number of former women members of the New South Wales Parliament from the across the political spectrum. It was a great pleasure to see women such as Wendy Machin from the National Party, Dorothy Issaksen, the former Labor Party Whip in the Legislative Council, Elisabeth Kirkby, the former Australian Democrat from the Legislative Council and a number of sitting members, including Sandra Nori, the Minister for Women, the President of the Legislative Council and other colleagues. Patricia Forsythe attended as the most recent woman to become a former member of the Legislative Council.
If members of this House and others have access to biographical information about former candidates, it would be very much appreciated. We will certainly be collecting information on the women who have run for the Legislative Council since it became an elective Chamber in the late 1970s. We also have the huge task, of course, of collecting information about the women whose details have not been discovered. When that task is completed there will be a great deal of work to be done on other women, for example, women in business, nurses and teachers. They are women who have played a major role in our community but who are often not recognised. One of the problems confronted when tracking down these women is that, unfortunately, many changed their name when they married. If they ran for Parliament or had any other career under their maiden name, it is almost impossible to track them down through newspapers and other sources. [Time expired.]