Anna Stewart Memorial Project

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:31): Parliament House was host to women unionists on Friday 1 June, with a tour of parliament and a lunch hosted by the shadow minister for the status of women, Katrine Hildyard. The session in Parliament House represented a combination of a week of activities for women unionists, as part of the Anna Stewart Memorial Project. The project has been running since 1985 in South Australia and has been designed to encourage the involvement and participation of women in unions.

The program brings together women from differing workplaces for a two-week internship. They experience various activities within their own union, including attending member meetings and negotiations, and get an opportunity to see how other South Australian unions operate and organise. The primary aim of the project is to increase women's active involvement and participation in unions.

The project was originally devised to provide a real and living memorial to the work of Anna Stewart. Anna Stewart was an Australian feminist, unionist and activist, and was born and raised in Adelaide. She was born in 1947, and on leaving school she worked as a journalist for newspapers in Victoria and the UK.

Anna Stewart became actively involved in unions in the 1970s, at a time when women comprised one-third of the paid workforce. At the time, women were predominantly engaged in limited industries, which were usually poorly paid, lacked job security, flexibility or skills recognition, and in general offered poor entitlements and conditions of employment.

In her role as industrial officer for the Federated Furnishing Trade Society, Anna Stewart successfully organised the first blue-collar campaign for maternity leave award provisions. Her subsequent work in the Vehicle Builders' Employees' Federation led to her fighting for child care in car plants, arguing work value cases and initiating campaigns against sexual harassment in the workplace. Anna assisted in the ACTU maternity leave test case, which led to winning the right for working women to 52 weeks' unpaid maternity leave, with the right to return to the same job.

Anna was a founding member of the ACTU Womens Committee. She promoted the establishment of women's committees in unions, in furtherance of the ACTU Working Women's Charter, the aim of which was to increase the involvement of women within union structures. After her tragic death in 1983, her great achievements in pursuit of the rights of working women were acknowledged by the launch of the Anna Stewart Memorial Project.

The inaugural project was coordinated in 1984 by the Municipal Officers Association in Victoria. From its early days to the present, the project has maintained, in essence, the same format, namely a two-week on-the-job training program for women unionists. To this day, the project continues to provide a living memorial to Anna Stewart and has offered many women an opportunity to participate in the trade union movement, to stand for office or to seek employment within unions.

Since its beginning, there have been many participants of the Anna Stewart Memorial Project, including Fay Donaghy, Sue Marks, Gail Gago, Anne Cunningham, Allison Murchi, Nat Cook, Elizabeth Dabars, Leona Hicks and Greta Bamford, to mention a few. Women from United Voice, the National Union of Workers, the Community and Public Sector Union, the Australian Education Union and the Public Service Association are represented in this year's group of participants. To this year's participants, I take the opportunity to wish you an informative and exciting experience which encourages you all to be more involved within your unions. I look forward to working with you in the future.

Finally, I take the opportunity to acknowledge the hard work and support for the project from SA Unions and the participating unions. Hopefully, next year's program will continue to build and expand upon this year's project and involve more unions and more women.