- Home
- Hansard & Papers
- Legislative Council
- 27 August 2002
Women's Franchise Act Centenary
Printing Tips |
Print selected text
| Full Day Hansard Transcript
« Prior Item |
Item 119 of 122
| Next Item »
Page: 4273
The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS [5.49 p.m.]: I speak in celebration of the centenary of the Women's Franchise Act in New South Wales and the fact that today, 27 August, marks exactly 100 years since the bill was passed. That is a great achievement. However, perhaps it is not surprising that while we are debating these matters a function to celebrate this event is taking place in the Stranger's Dining Room. I hope the House adjourns as quickly as possible so that we can join in the celebration. During debate on the bill the then Premier, John See, said:
The contention that a woman is better engaged in looking after her children, in making bread and in fulfilling her various domestic duties, than she is when exercising her common sense with regard to matters of great moment and public concern, is one of those puerile things unworthy of notice.
The then Premier needed to say that for a number of reasons. Perhaps he was responding to the following comment:
Can we, as sane people, subscribe to such a preposterous possibility as being governed by a Legislature and Cabinet of females—most of the women who have failed in the pursuit of woman's great object in life—man—and whose intellectual attainments and individual attractiveness would not, as a matter of course, be of a high order?
Those two quotes from the period when the legislation was being debated 100 years ago sum up the two sides of the argument. Now is a chance for us to pause and look back on how far women, and indeed we as a society, have come in the past 100 years and how far we still have to go. It is important to note that non-Aboriginal women in New South Wales have now enjoyed suffrage since 1902 and that that was a great victory at the time. It is also important to note that New South Wales was hardly progressive in this matter. South Australia and Western Australia acted in the 1890s. Although Premier Lyne tried in 1900 and the Legislative Assembly passed the bill on that occasion the Legislative Council—that benighted House—refused to do so.
Indeed, it was not until the third attempt that the Women's Franchise Act was passed in New South Wales, having been defeated by the Legislative Council on two occasions. It is clear that it passed on that third occasion only because similar legislation had already been passed by the Commonwealth Parliament. In New South Wales women were in the ludicrous situation of facing the imminent prospect of being good enough to vote in a Federal election but not in a New South Wales election. It was a hard-won right, one that the early suffragists and feminists fought hard to achieve. A number of sensible and intelligent men also fought hard to achieve the right for women to vote. It is appropriate to now pay tribute to them.
An issue raised at that time, and one that has been discussed on many occasions since, is whether the vote for suffrage was sufficient in itself or whether, as most of the first-wave feminists argued, it was a matter not only of political equality and rights but also a means of women in Parliament achieving better policies, including assistance for women in a variety of ways, particularly as the heads of families and as mothers, improvements in health and housing, legal means for women to escape violent husbands, equal pay, equal rights in the workplace and so on. Those issues are more problematic because in many ways women have found it more difficult to change government policy and practice than it was to win the right to vote 100 years ago.
On the other hand it is true that women, like men, have the right to disagree amongst themselves, to cover the entire political spectrum from the most radical to the most conservative. It is ludicrous and unfair to expect women to have the same agenda on policy and reform merely because they are women. We do not have that expectation of men. Why should we expect all women to act as if they belong to one party? In one sense we do belong to one party, the women's party, but in many other senses we do not. Obviously we still have a long way to go. The current debate about maternity leave, family-friendly policies, child care, and so on demonstrates that. The rather nasty tendency of those debates to spill over into natal arguments about giving women maternity leave so they will have more babies also shows how far we still have to go. We also have a fair way to go in representation. When I was elected to this House in 1991 there were 42 members, including 15 women. Today we have 10 women members. We will gain one but the figure will go down by one when the Hon. Elaine Nile retires. [Time expired.]
Last modified 05/12/2007 16:39:29 : Update this page