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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-06 Daily Xml
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Resolutions

Women's Suffrage Anniversary

Consideration of message No. 16 from the House of Assembly.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (17:38): I move:

That this council concur with the resolution of the House of Assembly for the appointment of a joint committee on matters relating to the 125th anniversary of women's suffrage; that the council be represented on the joint committee by four members, of whom three shall form a quorum necessary to be present at all sittings of the committee; and that the members of the joint committee to represent the Legislative Council be the Hon. T.A. Franks, the Hon. C. Bonaros, the Hon. I. Pnevmatikos and the mover.

I will make a few remarks in speaking to this motion. I spoke on this matter last year when we were establishing a joint committee in the previous parliament. At that stage, on 6 July last year, I spoke at some length in relation to some work that I had done for the National Council of Women, which was to examine all the laws going back to the time of settlement in South Australia that had advanced the cause of the status of women. It seemed like a good idea at the time and actually turned out to be quite a lot of work, but was very useful.

I would like to commend the mover of this motion in the House of Assembly, the member for Florey, Ms Frances Bedford, for reminding us that we need to re-establish this committee. We look forward to the contribution of the members of the House of Assembly and the members of the Legislative Council who will be on the committee.

The committee was established last year. I think it is fair to say that we did not make a huge amount of progress at that stage, but the 125th anniversary of women's suffrage is December next year so time is upon us and we need to get cracking.

I would like to make a few remarks in relation to the 125th anniversary and what took place at the time because it is quite a story and is worth recounting. The amendments to our state's Constitution Act made what was then the South Australian colony the first place in the world to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections and the first place in the world to grant women the right to stand for parliament. What is not well known is that the right to stand for election was a mischievous clause unsuccessfully inserted into the bill in an attempt to defeat it.

A coalition of women and men of strong character and diverse backgrounds had worked together to win the franchise through organisations including the South Australian Women's Suffrage League, which was formed in 1888. Catherine Helen Spence and Mary Lee led the charge and the Working Women's Union and many church groups played very significant roles. Elizabeth Webb Nicholls led the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which is an organisation that still exists today and which has a large volume of historical information. The Women's Christian Temperance Union collected over 7,000 of the 11,000 signatures on the historic petition, which is no small feat when you consider that the population of South Australia at that stage was dispersed and canvassing was on foot.

Women's virtue had come to be regarded as the saviour of the species, and as the angel of the hearth devoted to caring for the goodwill of others it was believed that women's participation in voting would help buffer civilisation against the social ills befalling other parts of the industrialising Anglo-Saxon world.

Reform had been contemplated in our parliament as early as 1872, with the first resolution being introduced in 1885 by Dr Edward Stirling, who said at the time, 'The right to vote by no means indicated that women should have a right to a seat in the house.' Several bills were debated and lost prior to the historic bill being agreed to in 1894.

By the time of the suffrage debates, which had lasted just under a decade, South Australia's politicians had actually come to the view that women were the intellectual equals of men as well as morally superior. However, as I referred to, the clause granting women the right to stand for parliament was an attempt to defeat the bill.

I pointed out last year, and I would like to point out again to honourable members, that you can find a picture of the Hon. Ebenezer Ward in our rogues' gallery in the Legislative Council lounge. He was a member of the Legislative Council and his role in women gaining the right to stand for parliament was significant even though it was dastardly.

Mrs Elizabeth Webb Nicholls gave her reasons for joining the cause of women's suffrage after hearing about some comments of some particular male politicians. She said:

The Hon. Ebenezer Ward was particularly scathing on the idea that women were fit to have votes. I had never taken much interest before, but I was so incensed by the insolence of his remarks that I wrote my very first letter to the papers. The debate aroused such interest that women began to raise their own voices on the Bill and demand, not votes for women with property, but a democratic suffrage.

When it got closer to the actual vote on the floor of the parliament, a particular account of the tense and uncertain battle, including how the measure was in doubt just 12 hours before the final vote and nearly failed, was provided by the journalist Cornelius Proud in an article called Review of Reviews. He was himself labelled a 'faddist' for his support of the cause and his report of the personalities, and tactics by those on both sides of the debate is worth reading. I have a couple of quotes from him where he said:

The prominence of the temperance workers in the fight for suffrage caused the public house party to take fright…

Later on he declares triumphantly that:

I had the honour to draft the now historic petition. afterwards signed by 11,000 persons, and to carry that ponderous document (which opened to about 400 feet in length) down to the House of Assembly for presentation to the Hon. G.K. Hawker.

The bill passed the House of Assembly on the morning of 18 December 1894 by 31 votes to 14, effectively enfranchising over 80,000 South Australian women. Mrs Nicholls reported three years later in her president's address to the Temperance Union:

The dire results prophesised by opponents of women's franchise have not come to pass. We have not heard of any domestic quarrels, or any neglected children as a result of the new departure, and dinner was cooked on election day much the same as usual.

There will be a number of members of this committee who have a recollection of the celebrations that took place in 1994, which I think will be quite useful to inform us and to carry through the heritage of those celebrations. I am grateful to the member for Bragg for having advised me about some of those celebrations. Many women from across the state took the opportunity to participate in the tapestries that are now on display in the House of Assembly, which were commissioned for the 100-year anniversary. Many women also recorded their names while the tapestries were located in a bank foyer on King William Street.

The campaign to gain the public and parliamentary support for the suffrage was a collective effort, and the tapestries which commemorate this historic victory reflect this. The Office for Women has been collecting some information from organisations which are interested in celebrating, but I think we want make this a very broad celebration. I look forward to the committee deliberating and us progressing some of these plans in preparation for December next year. I commend the motion to the council.

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (17:46): I rise to wholeheartedly support the motion. This motion represents an effort made across parties and across parliaments. It represents people of all political persuasions, representing a key milestone on the long road to achieving equality for women: the achievement of women's suffrage 125 years ago. South Australians are rightly proud of the fact that our state was the first in Australia to give women the vote, through legislation which was carried by the Kingston government in 1894. That milestone was one of many in South Australia's history where we have led the way in achieving real change and equality for people who have been denied the same rights as others.

I am proud to stand here as a woman member of the Australian Labor Party, a political party that continues to work hard to achieve equal representation of women in parliaments across the nation. Our federal caucus is nearing gender parity, and the recent state election saw many incredibly talented Labor women elected. Indeed, three of the four Labor members elected to this chamber in March are women.

But we still have further strides to take on that long road to equality. Representation of women in parliament, on corporate boards and across many sectors of the workforce illustrates the degree of underrepresentation we face. Women are paid less than men in many industry sectors, and workers in the professions dominated by women are too often paid less than in those dominated by men. This is a matter of equality and parity.

I strongly support the establishment of a joint committee to report on matters relating to the 125th anniversary of women's suffrage. I applaud the member for Ramsay for her endeavours in the last parliament, and the member for Florey, who has brought this motion forward in another place. Almost 125 years ago, brave women achieved a significant milestone—women's suffrage. That achievement must be celebrated.

The committee will enable us to focus and review our history, to celebrate past achievements of those who have agitated and struggled before us. We must not forget that the freedoms we all cherish and hold dear have been denied to others, and in particular to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the past. Understanding history can assist in correcting these inequities and injustices. For that reason, I commend this motion to the council.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (17:49): I rise to echo the words of the Hon. Michelle Lensink and the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos and to speak yet again to this motion to establish a cross-party committee to commemorate the 125th anniversary of South Australia's women's suffrage. I do so remembering the 1994 celebrations, and they were many and varied. Certainly, I remember taking part in several of the events. Much has been made of the work of Elizabeth Webb Nicholls already in the minister's speech. Members will be aware, of course, of Catherine Helen Spence and her good works.

That 1994 celebration saw the unveiling of the statue of Mary Lee, who at that point had been lost to history. In fact, Mary Lee was known for a few of her sayings. One of those was her life's work to leave this world better than we found it, and that is the motto that she not only stated but lived by. There were hundreds of events that year that saw women seeking to leave this world in a better place than when they found it.

There was a cross-party committee that was set up that looked at removing barriers to women's participation in politics, and it led to some federal work as well through the Office of the Status of Women, as it was then. I was reminded in my brief research today on this that there was a publication called Every woman's guide to getting into politics, which I remember having a copy of. Some might bemoan that that came into my possession in that year, but I am grateful for those who came before me and that that handy little guide made its way to me.

The other most notable event was, as the Hon. Michelle Lensink stated, the tapestries that were created. They involved, at the National Bank on King William Street, thousands of people passing through and making a contribution to that community tapestry. That tapestry commemorates the petition for women's suffrage, which was the largest ever petition in this state, with more than one-third of the people of this state signing in support of women's suffrage—some 11,600 in favour to 2,600 against for a similar petition opposing the move. That one-third of our state in terms of support for a movement has never been equalled in a petition to this parliament.

What I am heartened to see is that the tapestries remain in the other place on those walls commemorating not only women's suffrage but also other momentous achievements of South Australia. In 1940, we won equal parenting rights for women, who were not given equal parenting rights to the fathers of their children prior to 1940—shocking, I think, to think that it was not so long ago in our history that that was the case. But also, we won the right for women to serve on juries, the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 and also other great leaps forward such as the Married Women's Property Act 1884.

These are all fine things to commemorate in our history but I hope that we see the same body of work that we saw back in 1994 come from this, 125 years on. In fact, there is a little time capsule at the front of Parliament House. When you walk past, there is a little plaque out there. That collated a range of those activities and put them in a time capsule. I hope we see that these coming years similarly have such community engagement and such inspiration, particularly for women to get involved in politics and to act as full and equal political citizens and decision-makers of this state.

Harking back to those words of Mary Lee, there is still that same spirit in South Australia now. There is actually group called The Mary Lee Exchange. I was privileged to sit in a small Prospect Hall just recently at the height of summer and listen to people talk about feminism in 2018. I have a little calico bag which has written on it, 'to leave this world in a better place than we found it'. I carry that quite proudly to the shops and carry on the tradition of Mary Lee, as are those wonderful feminist area women of our era. With those few words, I commend a few more words of Mary Lee to the council: 'Let us be up and doing.'

Motion carried.

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