Australia's first female political candidate, South Australian suffragette Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910). South Australian women won the parliamentary vote in 1894 and Spence stood for office in 1897.Edith Cowan (1861–1932) was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly in 1921 and was the first woman elected to any Australian Parliament.
Women's suffrage in Australia was one of the early achievements of Australian democracy. Following the progressive establishment of male suffrage in the Australian colonies from the 1840s to the 1890s, an organised push for women's enfranchisement gathered momentum from the 1880s, and began to be legislated from the 1890s, decades in advance of Europe and North America. South Australian women achieved the right to vote in 1894, and to stand for office in 1895 following the world first Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act 1894. This preceded even male suffrage in Tasmania. Western Australia granted women the right to vote from 1899, although with some racial restrictions. In 1902, the newly established Australian Parliament passed the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which set a uniform law enabling women to vote at federal elections and to stand for the federal parliament (although up until 1962, "aboriginal natives" could be excluded from voting rights based on state legislation). By 1908, the remaining Australian states had legislated for women's suffrage for state elections. Grace Benny was elected as the first councillor in 1919, Edith Cowan the first state Parliamentarian in 1921, Dorothy Tangney the first Senator and Enid Lyons the first Member of the House of Representatives in 1943.
The first European-style governments established after 1788 were autocratic and run by appointed governors – although English law was transplanted into the Australian colonies by virtue of the doctrine of reception, thus notions of the rights and processes established by the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights 1689 were brought from Britain by the colonists. Agitation for representative government began soon after the settlement of the colonies.[2]
The oldest legislative body in Australia, the New South Wales Legislative Council, was created in 1825 as an appointed body to advise the Governor of New South Wales. In 1840 the Adelaide City Council and the Sydney City Council were established with limited male suffrage. Australia's first parliamentary elections were conducted for the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1843, again with voting rights (for males only) tied to property ownership or financial capacity. Voter rights were extended further in New South Wales in 1850 and elections for legislative councils were held in the colonies of Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania.[3]
By the mid-19th century, there was a strong desire for representative and responsible government in the colonies of Australia, fed by the democratic spirit of the goldfields evident at the Eureka Stockade and the ideas of the great reform movements sweeping Europe, the United States and the British Empire, such as Chartism. The Australian Colonies Government Act, passed in 1850, was a landmark development that granted representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments – through the constitutions generally maintained the role of the colonial upper houses as representative of social and economic "interests" and all established Constitutional Monarchies with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state.[4] 1855 also saw the granting of the right to vote to all male British subjects 21 years or over in South Australia. This right was extended to Victoria in 1857 and New South Wales the following year. The other colonies followed until, in 1896, Tasmania became the last colony to grant universal male suffrage.[3]
Women's suffrage movement
Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, 1902
A movement for women's suffrage gathered pace during the 19th century. The experience and organizations involved in the suffrage movement varied across the colonies.
South Australia
Propertied women in the colony of South Australia were granted the vote in local elections (but not parliamentary elections) in 1861. The Parliament of South Australia endorsed the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1894 and the law received royal assent in 1895.[5] The law applied equally in the Northern Territory, which was then a part of South Australia. Whilst the law was being debated, opponents amended the bill so upon passage, women would allowed to be elected in parliament, expecting such inclusion would scupper the whole bill. Instead, legislators passed the Constitution (Female Suffrage) Bill anyway, so South Australia quite accidentally gave women the right to hold legislative office when it granted them the right to vote.[6] This was because Section 41 of the Australian Constitution holds that "no adult person who has or acquires a right to vote at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of a State shall, while the right continues, be prevented by any law of the Commonwealth from voting at elections for either House of the Parliament of the Commonwealth". In 1897, Catherine Helen Spence became the first female political candidate for political office, unsuccessfully standing for election in South Australia as a delegate to Federal Convention on Australian Federation, which was held in Adelaide.[7] However the first woman would not be elected to the South Australia Council or Assembly until 1959.[8] The first women candidates for the South Australia Assembly ran in 1918 general election, in Adelaide and Sturt.[9]
Western Australia
Western Australia granted voting rights to women in 1899,[10] in time for women in the colony state voting in the first federal election.
Victoria
In Victoria, one of the first known women to vote was London-born businesswoman Mrs Fanny Finch,[11] on 22 January 1856 in the gold rush town of Castlemaine.[12] The first group of women are included in Helen Harris's “The Right to stand, the right to vote”. The Electoral Act 1863 enfranchised all ratepayers listed on local municipal rolls. Some women ratepayers in Victoria were able to vote at the 1864 colony election. However, the all-male legislature regarded this as a legislative mistake and promptly modified the Act in 1865, in time for the 1866 election, to apply the vote only to male ratepayers. Henrietta Dugdale, who publicly advocated women's suffrage since 1868, and Annie Lowe formed the Victorian Women's Suffrage Society in 1884, the first Australian women's suffrage society.[13] The Society called for votes for women on the same basis as men.[14] It took 19 private members' bills from 1889 before Victorian women gained the vote in 1908, and were able to exercise the vote for the first time at the 1911 state election, the last state to do so.[15] The Victorian Society disbanded in 1908,[14] after women in the state gained the vote.
In Queensland, the Women's Equal Franchise Association was formed in 1894, which collected two petitions in 1894 for women's suffrage.[17] The first petition received 7,781 signatures by women and the second received 3,575 signatures by men. The petitions called for one vote and one vote only, as at that time men with property had plural votes.[18]
A third petition was organized by the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement of Queensland in 1897 and attracted 3,869 signatures by men and women, and called for votes for women on the same basis as men.[19] The Franchise Association disbanded in 1905 after women in the state gained the vote.
The national suffrage struggle
The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales submitted a petition to the Australasian Federal Convention on 23 March 1897 calling for the right of women to vote in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia to be enshrined in the constitution.[20]
In 1903, the Women's Political Association was formed.[21]
The various suffrage societies collected signatures for monster suffrage petitions to be tabled in Parliament. The results varied. Recently some of these petitions have been transcribed and can be searched digitally.
Towards voting rights
The first election for the Parliament of the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 was based on the electoral laws of the six federating colonies, so that women who had the vote and the right to stand for Parliament at a colony (now state) level (i.e., in South Australia including the Northern Territory and Western Australia) had the same rights for the 1901 Australian federal election. In 1902, the Commonwealth Parliament passed the uniform Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which enabled women 21 years of age and older to vote at elections for the federal Parliament. The States soon gave women over 21 the vote: New South Wales in 1902, Tasmania in 1903, Queensland in 1905, and Victoria in 1908.
However, this franchise was excluded from women (and men) who were "aboriginal natives" of Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, unless excepted under section 41 of the constitution. Most did not get the vote for federal elections until 1962, and in all States until 1967. This exclusion did not apply to Māori New Zealander women and men.[22]
↑ Godden, Judith, "Pottie, Eliza (1837–1907)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 27 February 2021
↑ Oldfield, Audrey, Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 116, 119, 121.
↑ "About us". NSW Parliament. Archived from the original on 21 February 2011. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
Further reading
Dixson, Miriam. The Real Matilda: Woman and Identity in Australia, 1788 to the Present (UNSW Press, 1999).
Grieve, Norma, ed. Australian women: Feminist perspectives (Oxford University Press, 1981).
Grimshaw, Patricia. "Settler anxieties, indigenous peoples, and women's suffrage in the colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai'i, 1888 to 1902." Pacific Historical Review 69.4 (2000): 553–572. online
Grimshaw, Patricia, and Katherine Ellinghaus. "White women, Aboriginal women and the vote in Western Australia" in Women and Citizenship: Suffrage Centenary edited by Patricia Crawford, and Judy Skene.
Lovenduski, Joni, and Jill Hills, eds. The Politics of the Second Electorate: Women and Public Participation: Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Eastern Europe, USSR, Japan (Routledge, 2018).
McGrath, Ann, and Winona Stevenson. "Gender, race, and policy: Aboriginal women and the state in Canada and Australia." Labour/Le Travail (1996): 37–53. online
Sawer, Marian, and Jill Vickers. "Women's constitutional activism in Australia and Canada." Canadian Journal of Women and Law 13 (2001): 1+.
Tarrant, Stella. "The Woman Suffrage Movements in the United States and Australia: Concepts of Suffrage, Citizenship and Race." Adelaide Law Review 18 (1996): 47+. online
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government, and in a republican context, to the president, either in full or in part. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is responsible first to the parliament's lower house, which is more representative than the upper house, as it usually has more members and they are always directly elected.
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums. In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. In the beginning of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vote, increasing the number of those parties' potential constituencies. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
Universal suffrage ensures the right to vote for as many people who are bound by a government's laws as possible, as supported by the "one person, one vote" principle. For many, the term universal suffrage assumes the exclusion of youth and non-citizens, while some insist that much more inclusion is needed before suffrage can be called universal. Democratic theorists, especially those hoping to achieve more universal suffrage, support presumptive inclusion, where the legal system would protect the voting rights of all subjects unless the government can clearly prove that disenfranchisement is necessary.
Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories are broadly similar to the electoral system used in federal elections in Australia.
The Parliaments of the Australian states and territories are legislative bodies within the federal framework of the Commonwealth of Australia.
The Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. Its central purpose is to act as a house of review for legislation passed through the lower house, the House of Assembly. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.
The Parliament of South Australia is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of South Australia. It consists of the 47-seat House of Assembly and the 22-seat Legislative Council. General elections are held every 4 years, with all of the lower house and half of the upper house filled at each election. It follows a Westminster system of parliamentary government with the executive branch required to both sit in parliament and hold the confidence of the House of Assembly. The parliament is based at Parliament House on North Terrace in the state capital of Adelaide.
Women's suffrage – the right of women to vote – has been achieved at various times in countries throughout the world. In many nations, women's suffrage was granted before universal suffrage, in which cases women and men from certain socioeconomic classes or races were still unable to vote. Some countries granted suffrage to both sexes at the same time. This timeline lists years when women's suffrage was enacted. Some countries are listed more than once, as the right was extended to more women according to age, land ownership, etc. In many cases, the first voting took place in a subsequent year.
The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902(Cth) was an Act of the Parliament of Australia which set out who was entitled to vote in Australian federal elections. The Act established, in time for the 1903 Australian federal election, suffrage for federal elections for those who were British subjects over 21 years of age who had lived in Australia for six months. However, consistent with the White Australia policy, the Act excluded natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands (other than New Zealand) from the federal franchise, unless they were already enrolled to vote in an Australian state. The Act gave Australian women the right to vote and stand for parliament at the federal level unless they fell into one of the categories of people excluded from the franchise.
Government in Australia is elected by universal suffrage and Australian women participate in all levels of the government of the nation. In 1902, the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia became the first nation on earth to enact equal suffrage, enabling women to both vote and stand for election alongside men Women have been represented in Australian state parliaments since 1921, and in the Federal Parliament since 1943. The first female leader of an Australian State or Territory was elected in 1989, and the first female Prime Minister took office in 2010. In 2019 for the first time, a majority of members of the Australian Senate were women. At the time of its foundation in 1901, and again from 1952 to 2022, Australia has had a female monarch as ceremonial Head of State, while the first female Governor of an Australian State was appointed in 1991, and the first female Governor-General of Australia took office in 2008.
The 1901 Australian federal election for the inaugural Parliament of Australia was held in Australia on Friday 29 March and Saturday 30 March 1901. The elections followed Federation and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. All 75 seats in the Australian House of Representatives, six of which were uncontested, as well as all 36 seats in the Australian Senate, were up for election.
R v Pearson; Ex parte Sipka, was a landmark Australian court case decided in the High Court of Australia on 24 February 1983. It concerned section 41 of the Australian Constitution, and the question of whether four people eligible to vote in New South Wales could be prevented from voting at the federal level by a federal law which closed registration to vote on the day that the writs of election were issued. The court decided that they could, adopting a narrow interpretation of section 41, and therefore finding that there is no express constitutional right to vote in Australia.
The voting rights of Indigenous Australians became an issue from the mid-19th century, when responsible government was being granted to Britain's Australian colonies, and suffrage qualifications were being debated. The resolution of universal rights progressed into the mid-20th century.
Black suffrage refers to black people's right to vote and has long been an issue in countries established under conditions of black minorities.
The principles of the current Constitution of South Australia, also known as the South Australian Constitution, which includes the rules and procedures for the government of the State of South Australia, are set out in the Constitution Act 1934. Its long title is "An Act to provide for the Constitution of the State; and for other purposes".
Suffrage in Australia refers to the right to vote for people living in Australia, including all its six component states and territories, as well as local councils. The colonies of Australia began to grant universal male suffrage from 1856, with women's suffrage following between the 1890s and 1900s. Some jurisdictions introduced racial restrictions on voting from 1885. Such restrictions had been eradicated by the 1960s. Today, the right to vote at federal, state and local levels of government is enjoyed by citizens of Australia over the age of 18 years.
The Barton government was the first federal executive government of the Commonwealth of Australia. It was led by Prime Minister Sir Edmund Barton, from 1 January 1901 until 24 September 1903, when Barton resigned to become one of the three founding judges of the High Court of Australia.
A series of referendums on the proposed constitution of Australia were held between 2 June 1898 and 31 July 1900 in the six colonies that were to become the states of the Commonwealth of Australia. The first four referendums were held in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria in June 1898. Although all four saw a majority vote in favour, the majority in New South Wales was insufficient. Knowledge of the result in New South Wales led to low voter turnout in South Australia.
The Constitutional Amendment Act 1894 was an Act of the Parliament of South Australia to amend the South Australian Constitution Act 1856 to include women's suffrage. It was the seventh attempt to introduce voting rights for women and received widespread public support including the largest petition ever presented to the South Australian parliament. The proposed legislation was amended during debate to include the right of women to stand for parliament after an opponent miscalculated that such a provision would cause the bill to be defeated. Once passed, South Australia become the fourth state in the world to give women the vote and the first to give women the right to be elected to parliament.
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