The Australian Women's Register

Lynne Kosky was elected Member (ALP) for Altona in 1996. On the election of the Labor Government at the 1999 Victorian state election, she held the portfolios of Finance, and later Post Compulsory Education, Training and Employment. After her re-election at the 2002 state election, she was appointed the Minister for Education and Training. She was re-elected at the 2006 state election and held the portfolios of Public Transport and Minister for the Arts. In January 2010 she resigned from the parliament, citing serious family health problems as the reason for her resignation. She died at Williamstown on 4 December 2014.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Clare Martin gained the distinction of becoming the first Labor and first female Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in 2001. She was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory at a by-election for the seat of Fannie Bay in 1995. This seat was formerly held by the Chief Minister Marshall Perron, member of the Country Liberal Party. She was re-elected in 1997, assumed the leadership of the ALP in 1999 and went on to win the 2001 election. In addition to her role as Chief Minister, she held the ministerial portfolios of Treasurer, Arts and Museums, Young Territorians, Women’s Policy, Senior Territorians, Communications, Science and Advanced Technology. She won the 2005 election with an increased majority, but resigned from Parliament in November 2007.

Sydney-born journalist Geraldine Brooks worked as a Middle-East correspondent during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Nita Kibble was the first woman appointed as a librarian with the New South Wales State Library. Her career began by accident in 1899 when the signature on her application form was misread, and thought to be that of a man.

Raised by her aunt, Nita Bernice Kibble, Dobbie worked as a librarian and research officer. She established the ‘Kibble Awards for Women Writers’ in memory of her aunt. The ‘Nita May Dobbie Literary Award’ was established in 1996 in her memory.

Dr Clare Burton was a strong advocate and activist for social change, particularly in the area of equal pay for women. Her academic research fed into policy and practical change in the workplace.

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.

Philippa Poole is the 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.

Lilian Turner was the older sister of Ethel, with whom she wrote stories and edited magazines while at Sydney Girls’ High School. She won the Cassell and Co. (London publishers) literary competition for her novel The Lights of Sydney.

Carol Anne Martin was the first Indigenous women to be elected to an Australian Parliament. In 2001, she was elected MLA (ALP) for the Western Australian seat of Kimberley.

Edith Onians was a full-time volunteer (organiser and honorary secretary) from 1897 until her death in 1955 of the Melbourne Newsboys Society. She was the first woman Special Magistrate appointed to Children’s Court Melbourne in 1927, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) on 2 January 1933 for services to child welfare in Victoria.

Margaret Reid is the first woman to have been elected President of the Senate. She held this position for six years, from 20 August 1996 to 18 August 2002. In 2004 she was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for her service to the Australian Parliament and the community.

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 and was re-elected in 2004, retiring in 2008.

A member of the Australian Democrats, Roslyn Dundas was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) representing the electorate of Ginninderra, in 2001. She was the youngest woman ever to be elected to an Australian Parliament, but was unfortunately defeated at the 2004 election.

A member of the Canberra Liberals, Vicki Dunne was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory representing the electorate of Ginninderra from 2001 to 2020. She held the position of Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2012 to 2016.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Katy Gallagher was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Parliament of the Australian Capital Territory, 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 ACT 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 eligibility 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.

In 2022, she was appointed Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Vice-President of the Executive Council, and Minister for the Public Service in the Labor Government.

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.