CENTENARY OF QUEENSLAND WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

100 Years Since Women Won the Vote in Queensland
By Coral Wynter

BRISBANE -- A conference was held at the University of Queensland on the weekend of 9th and 10th April to commemorate and learn more of the history of women's struggle for the vote in Queensland. It is the centenary this year, on January 25th, when white women won the right to vote in Queensland state elections, the second last state to do so, followed by Victoria. South Australia had been the first Australian state to give the vote to women by a majority of one vote in the SA parliament in 1894. The weekend conference attended by about 40 women and men was organised by the Centre for Research on Women, Gender, Culture and Social Change at UQ, in particular the director of the unit, Prof. Carole Ferrier.

It is the general perception that Australian women didn't have to struggle for the vote because women did not chain themselves to Parliament House nor were force-fed in prison as in the suffragette fight for the vote in England. Nevertheless it was a 15-year battle from 1890 till 1905 before women won the franchise. And in Queensland, it took another 10 years before women had the right to stand for parliament in 1915. Audrey Oldfield was the first historian to research the suffragette struggle in Australia with her seminal book, published in 1992, called "Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle?" Now in her 80s, Audrey told the conference she received no government funding when writing her book as she was told the money for the 1988 Bicentenary Celebrations had all been allocated. Nevertheless, she uncovered a wealth of correspondence between women in the different colonies as the women "battled political expediency, ingrained prejudices and unabashed ridicule- while coping with differing party, class and temperance allegiances within their ranks."

Ann Nugent spoke on a number of Australian women who went to England and took up the suffragist struggle there. Nellie Martel was one of the first three women who stood for election to the Federal Parliament in the NSW Senate elections in 1903. Two years after her electoral defeat, (she received 20,000 votes) Martel went to England where she was a paid organizer for the militant British Women's Social and Political Union.

Researcher Deborah Jordan has uncovered another totally unknown Queensland suffragist, Leontine Cooper (1837-1903), a woman of French descent who established the Women's Franchise League in Brisbane. Of course, neither of these women are listed in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, even though Cooper wrote five novels, serialised in the newspaper the "Queenslander". A few weeks ago, Jordan unearthed the pseudonym that Cooper used, a fact that should lead to more discoveries.

Talks by John McCulloch and John Kellett gave a more detailed account of the Queensland battle for the female vote. McCulloch discussed the problem of the "plural vote" where rich pastoralists could vote in many districts if they owned several properties. Men were also denied the vote if they did not have residency for six months. Many in the new ALP that had formed argued the restrictions on a man's vote should be removed before women got the vote. Kellett has done particular research on Annie Lane, the wife of William Lane, the socialist founder of the utopian Paraguay experiment in the 1890s. Kellett exposed the fact that she wrote a regular letter under the pseudonym of "Lucinda Sharpe" in the "The Boomerang" and "The Worker" -- until now attributed to her husband. Annie Lane, the mother of 10 children, stressed the fact that women were mothers, rather than their position as wives or even tax-paying individuals, and therefore deserved the vote.

The question of when, where and how Aboriginal women got the vote was taken up by Loris Williams, descended from the Mulinjali people of Beaudesert and the Birra Gubba people of North Queensland. Williams is an archivist with the Community and Personal Histories branch in the Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy. Queensland holds the dubious honor of being the last of the Australian states to grant its Aboriginal residents the right to vote in state elections. In 1965, the Queensland cabinet agreed to finally amend the electoral act, two years before the 1967 federal referendum. But, oddly enough, there were some Aboriginal men and women on the state electoral rolls long before 1965 and some recall being ordered to vote by the local police. Other

Aboriginal people, despite being exempted from the notorious "Protection Acts", were deliberately turned away from the polling booths. Torres Strait Islanders were treated differently again. Williams is recording oral histories to give a clearer picture of this complex situation. It is becoming evident that the right to vote for white women was steeped in racism and racist agendas, driven by the need to build a new federal nation where whites would dominate and to exclude the Chinese and Asian immigrants.

ALP representatives, Rachel Nolan, member for Ipswich, and the youngest woman ever elected to state parliament at the age of 26 years, and Claire Moore, Queensland Senator, also spoke on current problems facing women. Carole Ferrier summed up the conference as very successful, with many lively discussions. A website has been launched by Shev Armstrong at http://arcq.com.au/suffrage. A walking tour of Brisbane suffrage sites was organized for Sunday April 10.

Conference Programme:

2005 is the Centenary of white women gaining the right to vote in Queensland. Most indigenous people were excluded from voting until 1965, and this year marks the 40th aniiversary of the enfranchisement of indigenous people. The conference speakers discussed and presented new research on women's struggles for the vote and what this meant then and subsequently.

Further Information: Carole Ferrier ph: 3365 3146 email:
c.ferrier@uq.edu.au

Sponsored by:
Centre for Research on Women, Gender, Culture and Social Change,
The University of Queensland, Australian Studies Centre, The University of Queensland, Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University
Office for Women, Queensland Government.