Thursday, 7 March 2024

International Women’s Day

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:01): Now for a happy story as we come into celebrating International Women’s Day tomorrow, this week and perhaps all month. On the mezzanine level of the Victorian state Parliament there is a little library of artefacts. One of my favourites is a little tea set that says ‘Votes for women’. I recently contributed an article which will be coming out in my local papers, and I want to share some of it with you.

A forgotten history, and it happened in Victoria. There is a moment, a wonderful moment in world history, that can easily be overlooked and forgotten because it was short-lived. Did you know that in 1863 some Victorian women were accidentally given the right to vote when our Victorian Parliament passed a law to allow all ratepayers on municipal rolls to vote in Assembly elections? In 1864 some bold Victorian women took advantage of the oversight and cast their votes for the first time. Can you imagine the victory of these women and what they must have felt? Sadly, the opportunity only lasted a short time, as after a short debate Parliament restricted the vote to only male ratepayers with the Electoral Law Consolidation Act 1865. A handful of women from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Victorian Temperance Alliance, with other suffragette groups, went door-to-door to gain the right to vote for Victorian women. 33,000 Victorian women signed the monstrous Victorian women’s suffrage petition in less than six months, and it was tabled in September 1891. Isabella Goldstein and her daughter – (Time expired)