Monday, 23 June 2025
Stranger’s Dining Room, NSW Parliament
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of New South Wales

Bujari gamarruwa

Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

I greet you in the language of the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways. I pay my respect to their Elders, past, present and future.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your kind invitation to attend this evening’s dinner celebrating the Centenary of Women in NSW Parliament.

I acknowledge the Indigenous women of our state who have passed down through the generations knowledge, traditions and law that are indistinguishable from their spiritual, social, economic and ecological connections to the land.

Six days after I was sworn-in as Governor, I gave the Balmoral Lecture at the Queenswood School for Girls on 100 Years of Women in Law and Parliament in NSW. It seems apt that some six years later I would be drawn back to this ever-important topic.

In NSW, we point to 1918 as the defining moment when women were granted the right to be lawmakers with the passage of the Women’s Legal Status Act, which, in a legal sense (with one exception) brought to fruition women’s participation in Parliamentary democracy, granting their right to be members of the Legislative Assembly, barristers, judges and Lord Mayor.

The right to vote had been attained in 1902 – except for Aboriginal women, which came some 60 years later.

There were some vocal opponents to women’s suffrage. The Anti-Female-Suffrage-League proclaimed that ‘a woman’s primary responsibility was to her husband’ and that ‘the female mind lacks the [necessary] quality of judgment unfitted by nature to exercise a calm discretion, more especially on grave political questions’.  ‘Voting power’, the League said, ‘should correspond with the strength of the nation’.^[1]   

The first 2 Bills were defeated as Samuel Charles MLC said, “It is unnatural”.^[2] When the Commonwealth Franchise Bill 1902 was put to the vote, then Prime Minister Barton absented himself from Parliament^.[3]

The debate in the Legislative Assembly on the 1918 Women’s Legal Status Bill is a treasure trove of anecdotes, attitudes and acerbic rhetoric.

It was debated on 5 December, less than a month after the end of the First World War. It was the role women had played in the war that grounded much of its support. The Hon J Garland said ‘we have seen what splendid work women are capable of doing …and recognise the capacity they have shown in their war work’.  

The Hon G Black, quoting President Wilson, added that women had shown those capacities well before the War.

When challenged by the Hon Dr Nash as to what women would bring to Parliament, Mr Black said; “They would civilise [the] members” to which Dr Nash retorted “We do not want to be civilised”.

In 1925, Millicent Preston-Stanley became the first woman elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly.

At the ceremonial opening of the 27th Parliament, The Daily Telegraph reported that Miss Preston-Stanley, ‘looked very charming … she was in black, or navy blue, or some dark material with trimmings, the whole set off by a chic black hat trimmed with gold trellis work.

On 26 August, Preston-Stanley made the first speech by a female Member of Parliament in this State and only the second in any Australian parliament, the first being by Dame Enid Cowan in the Parliament of Western Australia.

Preston-Stanley’s speech was notable for its robustness. The following excerpt demonstrates the power of her oratory.  She said:

‘I am deeply conscious that the advent of a woman in the parliament of this country is not exactly to be considered as a popular innovation. Some honourable members have been kind enough to suggest that women should be protected from the hurly burly of politics. This attitude of mind may do credit to the softness of their hearts, and I think it may also be taken as prima facie evidence of a little softening of their heads.’

‘I believe that women’s questions are national questions, and that national questions are women’s questions.’^[4]

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that: ‘An outburst of laughter greeted Miss Stanley's declaration that "man is the most important product of any community.” Undaunted, Preston-Stanley had simply retorted: “I wish to tell the hilarious members of the House … that the generic term man includes woman.”^[5]Something I should add which had been on the statute books of the State since before the turn of the century.

Millicent Preston-Stanley’s entry into politics as a Nationalist party member followed a decade of activism, including in the Australian Women’s Movement Against Socialisation and President of the Feminist Club. She was particularly concerned with issues of infant and maternal mortality and child guardianship.

Preston-Stanley was determined, resourceful and indeed feisty. In 1949, at a rally of the Australian Women’s Movement Against Socialisation at Sydney Town Hall, she was involved in a physical altercation with the equally feisty ‘Red Jessie’ Street who had attempted to gatecrash the event.^[6]

Given an office in an annex away from her colleagues,^[7] her treatment whilst in Parliament typified that of professional women for decades. Even more galling for Preston-Stanley was the failure of her Guardianship on Infants Bill, directed at giving both parents rights of equal guardianship.^[8] 

Preston-Stanley lost her seat at the next election, due in part to her party’s support of an “Independent Nationalist’.^[9] After the election, she declared herself ‘thoroughly disgusted’ with the cycle of ‘deputations, agitations, intimidations, organisations and having pushed the [Guardianship on Infants] Bill through Parliament’, she had with her electoral loss had ‘pushed it out of Parliament’.^[10]

Determined and resourceful to the end, she wrote, produced, financed and personally performed in a play entitled Whose Child. Advertised as a ‘tense, throbbing drama of real life interest to women,’ it premiered at the Criterion Theatre in November 1932 attended by Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, Premier Jack Lang and Minister for Justice, Lewis Martin.

Her ruse worked. In September 1933, Martin reintroduced the Bill into Parliament. Under the Guardianship of Infants Act 1934, both parents were granted equal guardianship rights and the principle of the child’s welfare being “first and paramount” was introduced, a principle which remains at the heart of all child welfare legislation to this day.  

It would be 12 years before another woman would sit in the Legislative Assembly. Replacing her late husband, Mary Quirk served as the Member for Balmain from 1939 – 1950.

Due to a legal technicality, women were constrained from sitting in the Legislative Council until 1926.^[11]

Politics isn’t always kind, something Janice Crosio found when elected in 1981 as the member for Fairfield, the first Labor member for 33 years. As she explained in a later interview, “you just didn’t challenge a guy and you certainly didn’t challenge a union guy”.  But in that election, she did, and she won with one of the biggest votes ever.  She was also told it was possible that her electorate might vote Labor, but it would never vote female.^[12]  But they did.

I have already used the epithets ‘determination’ and ‘resourcefulness’, and so it was with Janice Crosio.  In the 1984 ‘Wranslide’, not having nominated herself for Cabinet, thinking she was still too junior, her daughter took a telephone call one evening, calling out to her mother: “Mum, someone is fooling here.  Reckons he is the Premier of New South Wales”.  

As the first female Minister in any Cabinet, Wran allocated her the new portfolio of Natural Resources. It was challenging. On one visit to Leeton, the rice growers closed down the main street and burnt an effigy of her. They even came to Sydney carrying banners saying: “What are we going to do with Crosio”. 

But as she said, “nothing comes to you on a silver platter …”

Up until 1988, there had only been a total of 7 women elected to the Legislative Assembly. In the 49^th Parliament that year, a total of 8 women were elected.^[13]  Numbers increased significantly from 2003 onwards.

A century on from 1925, a total of 92 women have been elected to the Legislative Assembly.

Today, in the 58^th Parliament there are 38 women members of the Legislative Assembly, a percentage of just over 40%. There are 20 in the Legislative Council, just under 48%.  This is highest number of women ever representing the people of New South Wales.^[14]

The many firsts in this history included:

• Edna Roper as the first Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 1973 to 1976, and then Deputy Leader of the Government from 1976 to 1978.
• Janice Crosio, became, as I have said, the first woman Minister, holding the challenging portfolios of Natural Resources, and then Local Government, Water Resources and Assistant Minister for Transport, the latter 3 being held simultaneously.
• In 1988, the first and only ever Olympian was elected – Dawn Fraser.
• Elected in 1991, Kerry Chikarovski was the first female to lead any political party^.[15]
• The position of Minister for the Status of Women was created by the Fahey Government in 1993 with Kerry Chikarovski the first Minister to hold the position. Fay Lo Po was appointed the first Minister for Women, as the renamed portfolio was called, in 1995 in the Carr Government.
• In 2003, Linda Burney became the first indigenous Australia to serve in the NSW Parliament and served as Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 2008 to 2011.
• Kristina Keneally and Gladys Berejiklian have each served as Premiers of our State. Kristina Keneally’s Deputy was Carmel Tebbut, between 2009 and 2011, becoming the first time any Government in Australia has been led by 2 female members of Parliament.  Gladys Berejiklian was the first Liberal woman to be a Premier in any state and was the first female Treasurer in any Parliament in Australia. 
• In 2011, Shelley Hancock became the first female Speaker.
• In 2015, Gabrielle Upton became the first female Attorney General.
• A snapshot of the leadership positions held by women, without distinguishing between parties or Houses, reveals there have been:
• 5 Whips
• 4 Opposition Whips
• 1 Speaker
• 2 Deputy Speakers
• 3 Presidents
• 1 Deputy President
• 2 Leaders of the Government and 2 Deputy Leaders
• 3 Leaders of the Opposition and 6 Deputy leaders

It’s been a hard but glorious road to tonight. Whilst research in 2018^[16] found that 58% of Australians identified politics as the place where ‘sexism [was] most widespread in Australia’, a 2024 IPSOS survey found that 63% of Australians said they had no preference as to the gender of their political leaders.^[17] 

Barriers remain. UN Women cites, for example, the extent of online violence.^[18] Given that this and other impediments exist, it is apt to ask why is it important that women do stand for elected office?

The research is unequivocal. According to the World Economic Forum ‘a 10% increase in women’s parliamentary representation is associated with [almost one] percentage point in GDP growth.’ With greater female representation ‘paid family leave, pay transparency and childcare infrastructure measures are implemented which increase workforce participation, boost productivity and fuel economic expansion.’   The underlying message is that such policies are not mere ‘women’s issues’, they are, as Millicent Preston-Stanley said 100 years ago, national issues.^[19] 

Justin Trudeau probably had the best and possibly only reasonable answer when asked why he had chosen a cabinet of 50% male and female: “because it’s 2015.” I suspect that everyone in this room would say “it should have happened in 1925”. 

One hundred years on, it is time to honour and thank the dedicated and talented women of politics in our state.

[1] National Archives of Australia: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9561105. See also: www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/gender-and-sexuality/anti-female-suffrage-league-memorandum-prime-minister-barton-regarding-voting-rights-women;

[2] Women in Parliament

[3] National Archives of Australia: www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/gender-and-sexuality/anti-female-suffrage-league-memorandum-prime-minister-barton-regarding-voting-rights-women  

[4] Millicent Preston-Stanley: Address in Reply, Legislative Assembly, 26 August 1925.

[5] ‘State Session – Censure Motion – Miss Preston-Stanley’s Speech’ – Sydney Morning Herald, 26th August 1925: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16238409

[6] Trove: SMH 21 July 1949.    See also: https://insidestory.org.au/millicent-preston-stanleys-vocation/

[7] https://insidestory.org.au/millicent-preston-stanleys-vocation/

[8] A Fit Place for Women, NSW Parliament file:///C:/Users/BEAZLEM2/Downloads/WIP_Fact%20Sheet_The%20Advent%20of%20a%20Woman.pdf  

[9] https://insidestory.org.au/millicent-preston-stanleys-vocation/

[10] A Fit Place for Women, above n 8.

[11] As the 1918 Women’s Legal Status Bill had not originated in that Chamber and needed to be returned to it. Indeed, the Bill was ruled out of order by the Council because it intended to vary the constitution of the Legislative Council, and thus had had to originate within that chamber. It was sent back to the Legislative Assembly where reference to the upper house was removed, and this version of the Bill was then passed by the Council.  

[12] Fairfield City Council Heritage Collection.

[13] Women in Parliament

[14] Close to 50% (47.6%) if the Legislative Council is made up of women and nearly 41% (40.86%) of the Legislative Assembly.  See: Parliament of New South Wales, Women Members in the NSW Parliament: statistics (website): https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/Women-Members-in-the-NSW-Parliament-current-stati.aspx

[15] A position she held from 1996 until 2003.

[16] By IGPA, University of Canberra. Another 2018 survey, by the Pew Research Centre, found that only 43% of men considered that female leadership was important.

[17] https://www.ipsos.com/en-au/international-womens-day-2024

[18] Explainer: Why so few women are in political leadership, and five actions to boost women’s political participation - UN Women Australia

[19]  https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/political-power-and-economic-parity-we-need-more-women-leaders-for-the-future-of-jobs/