Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act 1894

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Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act 1894
Old Parliament House Adelaide 1872.jpg
Parliament of South Australia
CitationConstitution Amendment Act (No 613 of 57 and 58 Vic, 1894) [1]
Territorial extent South Australia
Enacted18 December 1894
Signed by Queen Victoria
Repealed1 January 1935
Introduced by John Hannah Gordon
Repealed by
Constitution Act 1934
Status: Repealed

The Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act 1894 was an Act of the Parliament of South Australia to amend the South Australian Constitution Act 1856 to include women's suffrage. [2] 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.

Contents

Background

The first resolution in the South Australian House of Assembly to give women the vote was introduced by Sir Edward Charles Stirling in 1885, and was passed but not acted upon. [3] Six bills were introduced unsuccessfully into Parliament over the subsequent decade. [3]

The campaign for women's right to vote in South Australia was led by the Women's Suffrage League, formed in 1888, [4] with key suffragettes including Mary Lee, Mary Colton and Catherine Helen Spence. [5] They collected signatures from across the colony, resulting in the largest petition ever presented to the South Australian parliament, 400 feet (120 m) long with over 11,600 signatures, [2] which was presented to the parliament by George Stanley Hawker. [4]

Passage

The Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Bill was first presented to the Legislative Council by John Hannah Gordon on 23 August 1894. [4] John Warren noted the common objection that the vote would "make women masculine" and John Darling said the Bill was "too much for him" as "Woman's place was at the head of the household, to adorn, and assist her husband..." [4] Nevertheless, the third reading of the Bill was carried by 13 votes to 9. [4]

Various amendments to the Bill were proposed during the ensuing debates, including restricting women from voting in the House of Assembly, restricting the vote to women over 25, and allowing women to vote by post in certain circumstances, all of which were defeated. [6] The Act was initially only intended to extend the right of an adult male to vote to adult women. [7] In an attempt to thwart the passage of the bill, Ebenezer Ward, an outspoken opponent of women's suffrage, moved an amendment in the upper house "to strike out Clause 4 barring women from being members of parliament". [6] This would give women the right to stand for election, a right not even the suffragists had been arguing for. [8] Ward's intention was that this would seem so "ridiculous" that the whole Bill would be voted out. [3] [7] His efforts have been dubbed a "great miscalculation", [6] leading to South Australian women becoming at the time "the most enfranchised women anywhere in the world". [9]

As the bill proposed constitutional amendment, a two-thirds majority was required to pass it into law. [8] The bill was introduced for the third time by John Cockburn on 17 December and debate went on long into the night, with conservative members stonewalling. [10] The bill was eventually passed in the House of Assembly on 18 December 1894, 31 votes to 14, with about 200 women present watching and cheering. [2] [8] It was given royal assent by Queen Victoria in March 1895. [5]

Effect

The Act was the first legislation in the world to grant the right for women to be elected to a parliament, [11] and made the colony the fourth place in the world to give women the vote after the Isle of Man (1880), New Zealand (1893) and Colorado (1893). [12] [13]

The Act enfranchised female citizens of South Australia, including indigenous women. [2] [14] [15] However, indigenous Australians who were not already on the electoral roll by 1901 were specifically excluded from voting after federation by the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 , a right that was not restored until the Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended in 1962. [15]

South Australian Premier Charles Kingston called the legislation the colony's "greatest constitutional reform", but Queen Victoria called it a "mad, wicked folly." [12] South Australian women voted for the first time the year after the Act was passed, with a higher percentage of eligible women than men turning out to vote in the 1896 South Australian colonial election. [3] [16]

The first female political candidate in South Australia was Catherine Helen Spence, who was a candidate for the Federal Convention in 1897. [17] The first women to stand for election to the parliament were Selina Siggins and Jeanne Young in the 1918 state election: both stood as independents and were unsuccessful. [18] Ironically, South Australia was the last state in Australia to have a woman elected to state parliament, with the election in 1959 of Jessie Cooper to the Legislative Council and Joyce Steele to the House of Assembly. [19] Nancy Buttfield had been elected to the federal Senate representing South Australia four years earlier at the 1955 Australian federal election. [20]

The Act was repealed along with the 1856 Constitution and replaced by the Constitution Act 1934 . [21]

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References

  1. ↑ "Constitution Amendment Act (No 613 of 57 and 58 Vic, 1894)". AustLII . Retrieved 10 April 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "National Museum of Australia - Defining moments - Women's suffrage". National Museum of Australia . Retrieved 9 April 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "South Australian women gain the vote: Overview". Parliament of South Australia. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Lead-up to the campaign for women's suffrage". State Library of South Australia. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  5. 1 2 "The South Australian women's suffrage campaign". Office for Women (South Australia) . Government of South Australia . Retrieved 17 April 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 "The Great Miscalculation or How South Australian Women Gained the Right to Stand for Parliament". The Centre of Democracy. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  7. 1 2 Shenoy, Rupa (17 December 2019). "Remembering Australia's role in the history of women's suffrage". Public Radio International . Retrieved 9 April 2021.
  8. 1 2 3 Magarey, Susan (1994). Caroline Daley; Melanie Nolan (eds.). Why Didn't They Want to be Members of Parliament? Suffragists in South Australia. New York University Press. pp. 67–88. ISBN   9780814718711.
  9. ↑ Lewis, Gillian (23 July 2021). "Review: ABC TV's Ms Represented". Broad Agenda. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  10. ↑ Wright, Clare (2018). You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World. Text Publishing. p. 55. ISBN   9781925603934.
  11. ↑ "SA Firsts - Timeline for South Australian Firsts". Parliament of South Australia . Retrieved 17 April 2021.
  12. 1 2 "Ebenezer Ward's ploy backfires as South Australian women gain right to vote and stand for election in 1894". Adelaide AZ. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  13. ↑ Grimshaw, Patricia (2013). Women's Suffrage in New Zealand. Auckland University Press. ISBN   9781869405168.
  14. ↑ "Against her better judgement?". The Centre of Democracy. 30 January 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  15. 1 2 "Voting rights for Aboriginal people". Creative Spirits. 3 April 2021. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  16. ↑ Daley, Caroline; Nolan, Melanie (1994). Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives. New York University Press. p. 5. ISBN   9780814718711.
  17. ↑ "Catherine Helen Spence's role in Federation". Government of South Australia. 1 May 2017. Retrieved 11 August 2021.
  18. ↑ Jones, Helen (1986). In Her Own Name: Women in South Australian History. Wakefield Press. p. 246. ISBN   9780949268587.
  19. ↑ FitzHerbert, Margaret (2004). Liberal Women: Federation - 1949. Federation Press. p. 183. ISBN   9781862874602.
  20. ↑ "Dame Nancy Buttfield—first South Australian woman in Parliament". Government of South Australia. 11 April 2014. Retrieved 11 August 2021.
  21. ↑ "CONSTITUTION ACT 1934 - NOTES". AustLII.
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