The Australian Women's Register

Jill Griffiths Hall has enjoyed a distinguished career in local, state and federal politics in New South Wales, representing the Australian Labor Party. She has held the federal seat of Shortland since 1998.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Katy Gallagher was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Parliament of the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.), representing the electorate of Molonglo, in October 2001. She was re-elected in 2004, 2008 and 2012 and served as Chief Minister from 16 May 2011 to 2014.

In 2014 Gallagher resigned from the A.C.T. government to seek preselection to the Australian Senate. She was appointed to fill the casual vacancy caused by the retirement of Senator Kate Lundy in 2015, and elected in her own right a year later, in 2016. After a brief interruption during the parliamentary elegibility crisis of 2018, when she was forced to stand down because she had not renounced her British citizenship prior to her nomination in 2016, she was re-elected as Senator for Canberra in 2019.

A member of the Liberal Party, Helen Cross was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory representing the electorate of Molonglo, in 2001. She served as an Independent from 2002 and lost her seat at the 2004 election.

A member of the ACT Greens, Kerrie Tucker was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory representing the electorate of Molonglo in 1995. She served in the Parliament until 2004.

Maura Fay’s name is associated with a variety of film, television and theatre projects including: Brides of Christ, The Paper Man, The Thorn Birds, Cold Feet, The Last Bullett, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Farscape and On the Beach.

Wendy Edmond was Queensland Minister for Heath and Minister Assisting the Premier on Women’s Policy. She was elected MLA (ALP) for the electorate of Mount Coot-tha on 2 December 1989.

Irene Longman was the first woman to both stand for and be elected to the Queensland Parliament. She was a member of the Country and Progressive National Party for the electorate of Bulimba from 11 May 1929 to 11 June 1932. Longman moved Address-in-Reply to the Governor’s Opening of Parliament Speech on 21 August 1929.

Kelly Hoare was elected MHR (ALP) for Charlton, New South Wales in 1998.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Sussan Ley was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia, representing the electorate of Farrer, New South Wales, on 10th November 2001. She was re-elected in 2004, 2007 and 2010.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Julia Irwin was elected to the Australian Parliament as Member for Fowler, New South Wales, in 1998. She was re-elected in 2001, 2004 and 2007. She was not a candidate in the 2010 federal election.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Joanna Gash was elected to the House of Representatives of the Parliament of Australia as the Member for Gilmore, New South Wales, in 1996. She was re-elected in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Danna Vale was elected to the House of Representatives as the Member for Hughes, New South Wales in 1996. She became Minister for Veterans’ Affairs on 26 November 2001 and Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence from 2001 until 2003. From 1984 until 1988 Minister Vale was a full-time wife, mother and student. In 1988 she began practising as a solicitor and held this position until entering parliament.
She did not contest the 2010 federal election.

Jackie Kelly was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister in the third Howard Ministry on 26 November 2001. She was elected MHR (Lib) for Lindsay, New South Wales on 19 October 1998.

Bronwyn Bishop, Minister for Aged Care (1998-2001), was elected MHR (Lib) for Mackellar, New South Wales on 26 March 1994.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Karin MacDonald was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory, representing the electorate of Brindabella, in 2001. She was re-elected in 2004.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Sharon Grierson was elected as the Member for Newcastle, New South Wales, in the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament at the federal election, which was held on 10 November 2001. She was re-elected in 2004, 2007 and 2010.

Carmel Tebbutt was a very successful ALP politician who made the transfer from the upper to the lower house of the New South Wales parliament. However, before she entered state politics Carmel was a councillor in the Marrickville Council from 1993- 1998 and their Deputy Mayor from 1995-1998. She entered state politics when she was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1998 and subsequently re-elected in 2003. During this time she served as Minister for Juvenile Justice (1999-2003), Minister for Ageing, Disability Services and Minister for Community Services (2003 -2005) and Minister for Education and Training (2005-2007). Carmel Tebbutt resigned from the Legislative Council in August 2005 to run for the seat of Marrickville in the Legislative Assembly by-election, which she won. She was then appointed Minister for Education and Training (2005 – 2008). In 2008 she became the state’s first female Deputy Premier and subsequently held the portfolios of Climate Change and Environment and in the Keneally Government, that of Health Minister. She retired from parliament at the 2015 election.

Fay Lo Po’ retired in 2003 after a distinguished public career in NSW politics. A long time member of the Australian Labor Party, she served in local government (on the Penrith City Council) before winning the seat of Penrith in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1991. Lo Po was re-elected in 1995 and 1999. While an MP, she held a number of portfolios, including Minister for Women, Community Services, Fair Trading and Consumer Affairs. She was Shadow Minister for Housing in 1994-95 while the ALP were in opposition.

Fay Lo Po’ was also heavily involved in local politics in the 1970s and 80s, culminating in a term as Mayor of the Penrith City Council in 1990-1991. She was Alderman of Prospect Electricity (1980-1987, 1991-1992) serving as Chair. From 1986-1987. She was Chair of the NSW Women’s Advisory Council, a Member of the Metropolitan Waste Disposal Authority, Chair of the NSW Board of Adult Education and Patron of various groups. She was appointed an AM in 1984.

Sandra Nori served as the New South Wales Minister for Small Business and Minister for Tourism. She is the Member (ALP) for Port Jackson.

Pearson was the first women in Britain to be decorated (received the George Cross) for saving a pilot from a burning plane.

Trisha Burkitt Dixon is a writer and a photographer with a passion for landscape, literature, art and history. She has written, edited, photographed and co-authored a number of books, has edited journals and contributed as a columnist and writer/photographer to various publications and lectured widely within Australia and abroad. Trisha is on the Board of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, on the National Management Committee of the Australian Garden History Society and a company member of Winifred West Schools Limited.

Linking her passions of literature and landscape, Trisha’s recent book Under the Spell of the Ages was published by the National Library of Australia. Trisha is currently working on a book to be published by Murdoch Books. She has spent 20 years documenting the life of Australia’s leading landscape designer, Edna Walling and spent some years working on a private commission to document one of Australia’s most interesting pastoral properties where our only Nobel Prize laureate for Literature, Patrick White wrote his first novel, Banjo Paterson wrote his last poem for and poet Barcroft Boake wrote a number of poems about. Research for this book led her to Greece and the island of Hydra where she now takes literary and photographic workshops.

Trisha has also worked as a pilot and as a presenter on ABC Television and is a landscape consultant and heritage adviser. She lives in an early colonial house on her historic grazing property at the foothills of the Snowy Mountains.

Helen Leonard worked with numerous women’s organisations including the Nursing Mothers’ Association (now the Australian Breastfeeding Association), Women’s Electoral Lobby, National Women’s Media Centre, CAPOW!, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, the National Foundation for Australian Women and WESNET. As a lobbyist and photographer in the women’s movement from the 1970s onward, she recorded the activities of many women’s organisations, building an extraordinary library of photographs and recordings.

In 1919, Susan Benny was elected a member of South Australia’s Brighton Council, thus becoming Australia’s first woman politician. She held her seat for two elections and left local government after failing to become mayor in 1922.

Ethel Turner’s first book, Seven Little Australians, was published in 1894. Translated into ten languages, it was made into a stage play in 1915 and a film in 1939. In 1953 it was televised in Britain, and in 1973 and 1975 by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Patricia Dixon was the first aboriginal woman elected to local parliament in New South Wales, and the first Aboriginal woman federal candidate for the ALP.

Grand daughter of Ethel Turner who complied The Diaries of Ethel Turner in 1979.

E. Jean Curlewis was the daughter of Ethel Turner. Before passing away she wrote a number of books including The Sunshine Family: A Book of Nonsense for Girls and Boys, with her mother.