By 1906 Preston Stanley was a council member of the N.S.W. Women's Liberal League, when its president/secretary was
Mrs Molyneux Parkes. Her bid in 1922 for one of the four multi-member
Eastern Suburbs seats on the
New South Wales Legislative Assembly failed (having been placed fifth on the Coalition ticket), but in May 1925 she was successful, winning the seat for the
Nationalist Party, one of the historic predecessors of today's
Liberal Party. She campaigned for reductions in
maternal mortality, reform in child welfare, amendments to the Health Act, and better housing. She delivered her
inaugural address to the Legislative Assembly of the
New South Wales Parliament on 26 August 1925, using the opportunity to address those of her colleagues who did not believe that women had a role in politics. She said: Some hon. members have been kind enough to suggest that women should be protected from the hurly-burly of politics. This attitude of mind may do credit to the softness of their hearts, and I think it may also be taken as
prima facie evidence of a little softening in their heads. … I believe that women's questions are national questions, and that national questions are women's questions, and it may be shown that woman can take her place amongst the representatives of the people in the Parliament of the country and play her part in the political life of the nation.In addition, her inaugural address argued against reducing the 48 hour
workweek to 44 hours, arguing that the
Labor Party should first shorten the average woman's workweek, which she claimed was 112 hours. She personally took up the cause of actress
Emélie Polini, whose ex-husband and his mother had custody of their daughter Patricia. In 1924 Emélie sued for the right to take her daughter on a trip to London after they refused her permission. This was denied by Mr Justice Harvey. Though her private member's bill on equal custody rights failed she continued the campaign. She wrote a play
Whose Child? based on this case. She also lobbied for family planning and sex education, a focus on maternal and child health, and for a chair of obstetrics at the medical school, sarcastically calling for "'Horses' rights for women" after the University of Sydney instead established a course in veterinary obstetrics. The Eastern Suburbs seat was abolished in 1927 and in the fresh elections both Preston-Stanley and
H. V. Jaques stood as Nationalist candidates for the single-member seat of
Bondi, and Jaques was successful. That was her last attempt at parliamentary honours. Preston-Stanley was actively involved in women's groups such as the Women's Liberal League. She re-formed the
Feminist Club of New South Wales and served as its president from 1920 to 1928 when
Ada S. Holman was elected to the position. and from 1952 until her death in 1955. and was President of the Women's Justices' Association from 1923 to 1926. A fervent supporter of the
United Australia Party (UAP) — a precursor to the Liberal Party — Millicent Preston-Stanley brought the Feminist Club to prominence in the 1930s. Under her leadership the club stood apart from many other women's organisations that existed in the period in that the latter — like the Australian Women's Guild of Empire — concerned themselves with matters revolving around home keeping, family, and religiosity. Their purpose was primarily evangelical, and social, helping to cultivate resources and gatherings for women to attend and exchange information and skills in craftwork like sewing, knitting and so forth. It was precisely the entrenched notion that politics did not form part of "women's concerns" that the feminist movement of the 1930s sought to dislodge, and it was this apolitical focus that distinguished the women's organisations of the period from the Feminist Club of New South Wales. The Feminist Club's objective was "to secure equality of liberty, status and opportunity in all spheres between men and women.’ In 1947 she founded the
Australian Women's Movement Against Socialisation in response to the establishment of a national bank by
Chifley's Labor Party. ==Works==