The Australian Women's Register

Margaret June Lynn was born in Perth in 1930. She was three years old when her family moved to Mosman Park, where she was educated at St Hilda’s Primary School, and later at Presbyterian Ladies’ College. She preferred to be known as June, and was in her youth a champion tennis player selected for the Wilson Cup State teams in 1948 and 1949. June studied physical education at the University of Western Australia and University of Melbourne. In September 1951, she married Frank Craig, whose father, Leslie Craig, was a long-serving member of the Legislative Council. June’s great grandfather, Robert John Lynn, had also sat in the Legislative Council from 1912 to 1924. June and Frank Craig had three children, one of whom was tragically killed by a falling tree from a bushfire near Rockingham in March 1977.

June Craig joined the Liberal Party in 1950, and was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the south-west seat of Wellington in 1974. After only one term in Parliament, she became only the second woman (after Dame Florence Cardell-Oliver) to achieve Cabinet rank in Western Australia, after which she held various Cabinet posts until losing her parliamentary seat in the 1983 State election. Craig was actively involved in a wide variety of community affairs and organizations, including the St Mary’s Anglican Guild, the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and Good Neighbour Council, the Save the Children Fund, the Karrakatta Club, the Commonwealth Games Association and the Western Australian Olympic Council. After leaving Parliament she was a partner in a children’s clothing business and served as senior Vice-President of the Forrest Division of the Liberal Party.

In 1994 June Craig was appointed a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) for her long and distinguished parliamentary and community service.