This is a list of women who served as governors of states and territories of Australia.
As of January 2020, ten women have served or are serving as the governor of an Australian state. The governors are the representatives of Australia's monarch in each of Australia's six states. The governors are the nominal chief executives of the states, performing the same constitutional and ceremonial functions at the state level as does the Governor-General of Australia at the national or federal level. The state governors are not subject to the constitutional authority of the governor-general, but are directly responsible to the monarch.
Two women have served as Administrator of the Northern Territory, an official appointed by the Governor-General of Australia to represent the government of the Commonwealth in the Northern Territory who performs functions similar to those of a state governor. However, the Administrator is not the direct representative of the Monarch in the Territory as territories are not sovereign in the same way as states.
The first female governor in Australia was Dame Roma Mitchell in South Australia in 1991. To date, Australia has had one female Governor-general, Dame Quentin Bryce, who previously served as Governor of Queensland.
Since 1 November 2021, excluding the Governor of Western Australia, the remaining 5 state governors and the Administrator of the Northern Territory are all female, which is unprecedented in the Australian history.
Portrait | Name | State | Term start | Term end | Duration | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Honourable Dame Roma Mitchell AC , DBE , CVO , QC | 31st Governor of South Australia | 6 February 1991 | 21 July 1996 | 5 years, 166 days | [1] | |
The Honourable Leneen Forde AC | 22nd Governor of Queensland | 29 July 1992 | 29 July 1997 | 5 years, 0 days | [2] | |
Professor The Honourable Dame Marie Bashir AD , CVO | 37th Governor of New South Wales | 1 March 2001 | 1 October 2014 | 13 years, 214 days | [3] | |
The Honourable Marjorie Jackson-Nelson AC, CVO, MBE | 33rd Governor of South Australia | 3 November 2001 | 31 July 2007 | 5 years, 270 days | [4] | |
The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD , CVO | 24th Governor of Queensland | 29 July 2003 | 29 July 2008 | 5 years, 0 days | [5] | |
The Honourable Penelope Wensley AC | 25th Governor of Queensland | 29 July 2008 | 29 July 2014 | 6 years, 0 days | [6] | |
The Honourable Sally Thomas AC | 18th Administrator of the Northern Territory | 1 October 2011 | 10 November 2014 | 3 years, 40 days | [7] | |
The Honourable Kerry Sanderson AC CVO | 32nd Governor of Western Australia | 20 October 2014 | 1 May 2018 | 3 years, 193 days | [8] | |
Professor The Honourable Kate Warner AC | 29th Governor of Tasmania | 10 December 2014 | 9 June 2021 | 6 years, 181 days | [9] | |
Her Excellency The Honourable Linda Dessau AC | 29th Governor of Victoria | 1 July 2015 | Incumbent | 7 years, 293 days | [10] | |
Her Honour The Honourable Vicki O'Halloran AO | 20th Administrator of the Northern Territory | 1 October 2017 | Incumbent | 5 years, 201 days | [11] | |
Her Excellency The Honourable Margaret Beazley AC , QC | 39th Governor of New South Wales | 2 May 2019 | Incumbent | 3 years, 353 days | [12] | |
Her Excellency The Honourable Barbara Baker AC | 30th Governor of Tasmania | 16 June 2021 | Incumbent | 1 year, 308 days | ||
Her Excellency The Honourable Frances Adamson AC | 36th Governor of South Australia | 7 October 2021 | Incumbent | 1 year, 195 days | ||
Her Excellency The Honourable Jeannette Young PSM | 27th Governor of Queensland | 1 November 2021 | Incumbent | 1 year, 170 days |
The governor-general of Australia is the representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III, in Australia. The governor-general is appointed by the monarch on the recommendation of government ministers. The governor-general has formal presidency over the Federal Executive Council and is commander-in-chief of the Australian Defence Force. The functions of the governor-general include appointing ministers, judges, and ambassadors; giving royal assent to legislation passed by parliament; issuing writs for election; and bestowing Australian honours.
The governor of New South Wales is the viceregal representative of the Australian monarch, King Charles III, in the state of New South Wales. In an analogous way to the governor-general of Australia at the national level, the governors of the Australian states perform constitutional and ceremonial functions at the state level. The governor is appointed by the king on the advice of the premier of New South Wales, and serves in office for an unfixed period of time—known as serving At His Majesty's pleasure—though five years is the general standard of office term. The current governor is retired jurist Margaret Beazley, who succeeded David Hurley on 2 May 2019.
The governors of the Australian states are the representatives of Australia's monarch in each of Australia's six states. The governors are the nominal chief executives of the states, performing the same constitutional and ceremonial functions at the state level as does the Governor-General of Australia at the national or federal level. The state governors are not subject to the constitutional authority of the governor-general, but are directly responsible to the monarch. In practice, with notable exceptions the governors are generally required by convention to act on the advice of the state premiers or the other members of a state's cabinet.
Dame Roma Flinders Mitchell, was an Australian lawyer, judge and state governor. She was the first woman to hold a number of positions in Australia – the country's first woman judge, the first woman to be a Queen's Counsel, a chancellor of an Australian university and the Governor of an Australian state.
Dame Quentin Alice Louise Bryce, is an Australian academic who served as the 25th governor-general of Australia from 2008 to 2014. She is the first woman to have held the position, and was previously the 24th Governor of Queensland from 2003 to 2008.
Mary Marguerite Leneen Forde, DStJ is a retired solicitor and former Chancellor of Griffith University, who served as the 22nd Governor of Queensland from 1992 until 1997. Forde chaired the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions during 1998 and 1999 that found systemic child abuse in government or non-government institutions between 1911 and 1999.
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 since 1952, 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 following is the Australian Table of Precedence.
The monarchy of Australia is Australia's form of government embodied by the Australian sovereign and head of state. The Australian monarchy is a constitutional monarchy, modelled on the Westminster system of parliamentary government, while incorporating features unique to the Constitution of Australia.
Sally Gordon Thomas is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, serving from 1992 to 2009. She was appointed to the Court on 10 August 1992 and was the first woman to be appointed a Judge of the Court. She was sworn in as the first female Administrator of the Northern Territory in October 2011. One of her first engagements in the role was to welcome Barack Obama, the President of the United States, to Darwin during his visit in November 2011.
Michael John Strachan Bryce, was an Australian architect and graphic and industrial designer. He was the husband of the 25th governor-general of Australia, Dame Quentin Bryce.
The 2013 Australian federal election to elect the members of the 44th Parliament of Australia took place on 7 September 2013. The centre-right Liberal/National Coalition opposition led by Opposition leader Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party of Australia and Coalition partner the National Party of Australia, led by Warren Truss, defeated the incumbent centre-left Labor Party government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in a landslide. Labor had been in government for six years since being elected in the 2007 election. This election marked the end of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor government and the start of the 9 year long Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Liberal-National Coalition government. Abbott was sworn in by the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, as Australia's new Prime Minister on 18 September 2013, along with the Abbott Ministry. The 44th Parliament of Australia opened on 12 November 2013, with the members of the House of Representatives and territory senators sworn in. The state senators were sworn in by the next Governor-General Peter Cosgrove on 7 July 2014, with their six-year terms commencing on 1 July.
The Australian head of state dispute is the ongoing debate as to who is considered to be the head of state of Australia—the monarch, the governor-general, or both. Head of state is a description used in official sources for the monarch. The Australian constitution does not mention the term head of state. In discussion it has been used for describing the person who holds the highest rank among the officers of government. A number of writers, most notably Sir David Smith (1933–2022), have argued that the term is better used to describe the governor-general. The difference of opinion has mainly been discussed in the context of Australia becoming a republic, and was prominently debated in the lead-up to the republic referendum in 1999.
Today South Australia's land borders are defined to the west by the 129° east longitude with Western Australia, to the north by the 26th parallel south latitude with the Northern Territory and Queensland and to the east by 141° east longitude with Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria; however, this is not where all borders are actually marked on the ground.
The following lists events that happened during 2013 in Australia.
Richard Mark Persson is a former senior New South Wales and Queensland public servant and local government administrator. Persson currently serves as a member of the Central Sydney Planning Committee.
The following is a list of events including expected and scheduled events for the year 2023 in Australia.