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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-09-14 Daily Xml
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ELECTORAL HISTORY IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (16:07): I would just like to acknowledge the member for Schubert's contribution on the issue of food security, and I congratulate him on his ongoing campaign; it is very much appreciated.

First of all, I congratulate Mark Butler and Don Farrell on their joining the federal government's cabinet and outer cabinet, along with Penny Wong and Kate Ellis. It is great to see that South Australia is represented by such fine people.

As a student of women's history and also women's studies, I have been even more inspired recently by my participation in the Muriel Matters Society. Members in this chamber have heard about our very own Muriel Matters. However, in pursuing her history and her contribution, particularly to the suffrage movement, I have been concerned by the lack of knowledge that many of our journalists in South Australia seem to have about our history and also our electoral legislation history.

So, I asked the Parliamentary Research Library whether it could check some facts for me because I thought it was quite concerning that we quite often get it wrong, and I think a number of us have been acting on information that has not been entirely correct.

Apparently South Australia can claim to have the first Australian jurisdiction to give women the vote for parliament. We are also the first jurisdiction worldwide to give women the right to stand for election in parliament and we are the first Australian jurisdiction where a woman was elected to a local council. So I think we can be very proud of that. It is sometimes said that Catherine Helen Spence was the first female political candidate and that Susan Grace Benny was Australia's first elected politician. Both of these women were South Australian and both achieved these milestones in South Australia but not in the parliamentary sphere. I am told it is not correct to claim that South Australia was the first place to give women the right to vote nor is it correct to claim that South Australia was the first to introduce secret ballot, which is another thing that I had been told and I am sad to hear that that is not the case.

Mr Bignell: We would've if we could've.

The Hon. S.W. KEY: I agree with the member for Mawson; we certainly would have if we could have. From 1861 South Australian women who owned or rented property in their own name were entitled to vote at local government elections. This right was not extended to voting for the Australian parliament until 1894 when that parliament passed the Constitution Act Amendment Act 'Adult Suffrage Act' 1894. That legislation allowed women to vote for both the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council on the same basis as men. I think the interesting thing to note about that is that adult Aboriginal women were also able to vote at that stage as well.

Because the legislation amended the Constitution Act, it was reserved for royal assent, which was received in March 1895. Once the act received royal assent, women could enrol as electors and then needed, like men, to be on the roll for six months before they could vote. So even for the very first women to enrol in South Australia, they would only have been entitled to vote in September 1895. The first election after the act received royal assent was a North Adelaide by-election held in June 1895 but that was too early in the year for women to vote generally. The first election at which South Australian women would have been entitled to vote was held on 25 April 1896. This was a general election for 54 House of Assembly seats in 27 districts. So South Australian women were first given the right to vote in parliament in March 1895 and were the first to exercise that right in April 1896.

There is a lot of other information that I would like to discuss in this area but it is also interesting to note that, if you want to know where women could first vote, there is some evidence to say that women had voting rights in 1871 in the Paris Commune, in 1881 on the Isle of Man, although they could not stand as candidates and, closer to home, Norfolk Island was in 1856.

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