Women in Parliament

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (17:38): I move:

That this house acknowledges and celebrates the election of Mrs Joyce Steele to this House of Assembly and Dr Jessie Cooper to the Legislative Council in 1959, being the first women elected to this state's parliament.

Fortunately, the library has a wealth of information on these two ladies, so I will be reading my speech today:

Members of parliament: Jessie Cooper, MLC & Joyce Steel, MLA. South Australia was the first state to see the election of more than one 'first woman' into office at the same time, and their success came at a time when questions were being asked as to why so few women had found their way into the nation's Parliaments…Joyce Steele, Jessie Cooper and three other female candidates came forward in South Australia in 1959…

The book continues:

Joyce Wishart was born at Midland, Western Australia, in 1909, to a couple that lived for politics and community work. Her father was a technical school headmaster and ran for Mayor when Joyce was 10. By that time she was just as interested in politics as her parents...Joyce was educated at Perth College, and married Wilfred Steele…in 1936. When Wilfred retired, the family moved to his hometown of Adelaide. It was here in 1941 that Joyce recorded one of her many 'firsts' when the ABC appointed her as its first female announcer in South Australia. Joyce beat 119 other applicants for the job, which she kept for two years. During this time she also worked to establish a special school for the deaf, and her efforts paid off with the opening of the South Australian Oral School. She would serve as President of the school from 1947 to 1968, and in 1964 a new wing at the school was named after her. Joyce also later became the first woman member of the Council of the South Australian Institute of Technology, a position she held from 1961 to 1968.

Her daughter's disability made Joyce keenly aware of the lack of facilities for the disabled, and this awareness prompted her to go into politics. She made her first attempt in 1956, with a run for preselection for the seat of West Torrens…She lost by one vote…In 1958 Joyce ran for preselection again, this time in the seat of Burnside…Joyce won the preselection, but sadly, Wilfred did not live to see his wife elected to the Legislative Assembly the following year.

When Joyce and Jessie were elected in March 1959, Adelaide's Advertiser questioned how the pair would deal with combining the roles of politician and homemaker. Joyce commented that she would have to get a housekeeper to help around the home, while Jessie said that she would fit in her housework in the same way as a male member fitted in the running of an orchard or an accountant's office. Both women also gave an idea of interests they would pursue in Parliament: Joyce would concentrate on social welfare problems, while Jessie said she would not concentrate solely on women's issues, but would work with men on a range of issues. On a more trivial note, the paper pointed out that the two women lived only two streets away from each other.

The book continues:

The columnist clearly believed that Joyce and Jessie would cope with their roles as pioneers…Both women were invited to move the Address in Reply when Parliament opened in July. Joyce spoke of the honour that she felt at being the first woman to raise her voice in the Legislative Assembly, and told the House that she had received a warm welcome from MPs on both sides of politics, and from Parliamentary staff. She quoted part of a letter she had received Viscountess Astor, the first woman MP in Britain, who told Joyce about her less than happy experience during her early time in Parliament…'How much happier has been my fate!' Joyce added. Her speech went on to cover a range of topics, including the development of a research laboratory, price controls on food items, public transport services for disabled children, and the need for a more co-ordinated approach to social welfare problems.

In the Legislative Council, Jessie did not dwell on her place in political history during her Address in Reply speech. Instead she focused on issues affecting education from primary through to tertiary…Jessie was known as a staunch Conservative, but she was not blinded by ideology. Although she believed in the traditional wife-and-mother role for women, she also argued for equal pay for women who had gained the same training and qualifications as men. Jessie had a fight for equal treatment as soon as she entered Parliament, when she discovered that while her male colleagues were entitled to superannuation, she was not. The attitude of the time was that the husband of any female MPs would be working, so the women would not need to accumulate super. Believing this to be grossly unfair, Jessie confronted Premier Tom Playford on the issue and won the fight for female MPs to be paid superannuation.

It continues:

…Labor MP, Anne Levy, told the House that Jessie's speeches had all been thoughtful and well researched: 'They were never unduly verbose and always worth listening to, even though occasionally it made my blood pressure rise when I was listening to them.'

Levy's comments point to one of the paradoxes of Jessie's beliefs. Dr James Cooper recalls that many feminists had problems with his mother's views because Jessie never had much truck with feminism, despite the battles she had to fight in order to be elected and her views on women's right to equal pay for equal work. She 'never felt that being a woman had ever held her back. She did her political work, came home, and cooked dinner, although we did have a housekeeper. She believed that women should get in there, muck in and get on with it.' James recalls that by the end of her political career, Jessie had had enough politics and public life and she 'retired into domestic bliss,' living quietly, playing bridge and travelling with her husband. Jessie died in December 1993, at the age of 79. On hearing of her death, Premier Dean Brown described her as a highly respected pioneer for women in politics, and a woman of firm principle who had served South Australia with distinction.

…Jessie remained on the backbenches during her parliamentary career, but Joyce went two steps further. In 1963 she was appointed the first female party Whip in South Australia, a position she would hold until 1968. That was the year she became Education Minister, making her not only the first female Minister in that state, but also the first woman to hold the Education portfolio anywhere in Australia.

It continues:

Joyce encountered her first hitch when she moved into her ministerial office. Since there had never been a woman incumbent before, there was no female toilet on the same floor. She took that in her stride, later commenting that: 'It didn't worry me; I just went to the one on the floor below and used to have a bit of a chat to members of the staff who used it.' The education portfolio would have problems that were not so easily solved. Joyce raised the number of schools and teachers, increased specialist courses and introduced regional education offices around the State…

It goes on:

Joyce spent four years on the Opposition backbenches before retiring from Parliament in 1974. Her departure prompted a compliment from a colleague known for his flamboyant taste in clothes:

the premier of the time, Don Dunstan, was praising also her contribution of 'brightness and lightness to the masculine gloom of this Chamber which I now see is gradually changing under her influence' when another polly interjected 'the pink shorts!'—thus indicating the genesis of that historic fashion change in State politics.

I commend the motion to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Treloar.