Male suffrage The first European-style governments established after 1788 were
autocratic and run by appointed
governors – although English law was transplanted into the Australian colonies by virtue of the
doctrine of reception, thus notions of the rights and processes established by
Magna Carta and the
Bill of Rights 1689 were brought from Britain by the colonists. Agitation for representative government began soon after the settlement of the colonies. The oldest legislative body in Australia, the
New South Wales Legislative Council, was created in 1825 as an appointed body to advise the
Governor of New South Wales. In 1840 the
Adelaide City Council and the
Sydney City Council were established with limited
male suffrage. Australia's first parliamentary elections were conducted for the
New South Wales Legislative Council in 1843, again with voting rights (for males only) tied to property ownership or financial capacity. Voter rights were extended further in New South Wales in 1850 and elections for legislative councils were held in the colonies of Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania. By the mid-19th century, there was a strong desire for representative and responsible government in the colonies of Australia, fed by the democratic spirit of the
goldfields evident at the
Eureka Stockade and the ideas of the great reform movements sweeping
Europe, the
United States and the
British Empire, such as
Chartism. The Australian Colonies Government Act, passed in 1850, was a landmark development that granted representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments – through the constitutions generally maintained the role of the colonial upper houses as representative of social and economic "interests" and all established
Constitutional Monarchies with the
British monarch as the symbolic head of state. 1855 also saw the granting of the right to vote to all male British subjects 21 years or over in
South Australia. This right was extended to Victoria in 1857 and New South Wales the following year. The other colonies followed until, in 1900, Tasmania became the last colony to grant universal
male suffrage. The law applied equally in the
Northern Territory, which was then a part of South Australia. While the law was being debated, opponents of female suffrage amended the bill to allow women to also be elected to parliament, expecting that this would lead to the defeat of the entire bill. However, the amended bill was passed, giving women the right to hold legislative office when it granted them the right to vote. In 1897,
Catherine Helen Spence became the first female political candidate for political office, unsuccessfully standing for election in South Australia as a delegate to Federal Convention on Australian Federation, which was held in Adelaide. However the first woman would not be elected to the South Australia Council or Assembly until 1959. The first women candidates for the South Australia Assembly ran in the 1918 general election, in Adelaide and Sturt.
Western Australia Western Australia granted voting rights to white British women in 1900, in time for women in the colony state voting in the first federal election.
The Constitution Act Amendment Act of 1893 had retained a property qualification for "Aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia or Africa" and people of mixed descent. The property qualification (ownership of land that was valued at least £100) excluded virtually all such persons from the franchise.
Victoria In Victoria, one of the first known women to vote was London-born businesswoman
Mrs Fanny Finch, on 22 January 1856 in the gold rush town of Castlemaine. The first group of women are included in Helen Harris's “The Right to stand, the right to vote”. The
Electoral Act 1863 enfranchised all ratepayers listed on local municipal rolls. Some women ratepayers in Victoria were able to vote at the
1864 colony election. However, the all-male legislature regarded this as a legislative mistake and promptly modified the Act in 1865, in time for the
1866 election, to apply the vote only to male ratepayers.
Henrietta Dugdale, who publicly advocated women's suffrage since 1868, and
Annie Lowe formed the
Victorian Women's Suffrage Society in 1884, the first Australian women's suffrage society. The Society called for votes for women on the same basis as men. The Victorian Society disbanded in 1908, after women in the state gained the vote.
New South Wales In 1889,
Rose Scott and
Mary Windeyer helped to found the Women's Literary Society in
Sydney, which grew into the
Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales in 1891. Women from the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union in New South Wales were also active in suffrage activities. They founded the Franchise League in 1890.
Eliza Pottie served as president before the league's disbanding. She later joined the Womanhood Suffrage League.
Queensland In
Queensland, the
Women's Equal Franchise Association was formed in 1894, which collected two petitions in 1894 for women's suffrage. The first petition received 7,781 signatures by women and the second received 3,575 signatures by men. The petitions called for one vote and one vote only, as at that time men with property had plural votes. A third petition was organised by the
Woman's Christian Temperance Movement of Queensland in 1897 and attracted 3,869 signatures by men and women, and called for votes for women on the same basis as men. The Franchise Association disbanded in 1905 after white British women in the state gained the vote. Under the
Queensland Elections Act (1885), no "aboriginal native of Australia, Asia, Africa, or the Islands of the Pacific" was entitled to vote.
The national suffrage struggle The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales submitted a petition to the
Australasian Federal Convention on 23 March 1897 calling for the right of women to vote in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia to be enshrined in the constitution. A unified body, the
Australian Women's Suffrage Society was formed in 1889, with the aim of educating women and men about a woman's right to vote and stand for parliament. Key figures in the Australian suffrage movement included: from South Australia
Mary Lee and
Catherine Helen Spence; in Western Australia
Edith Cowan; from New South Wales
Maybanke Anderson,
Louisa Lawson,
Dora Montefiore and Rose Scott; from Tasmania
Alicia O'Shea Petersen and
Jessie Rooke; from Queensland
Emma Miller; and from Victoria
Annette Bear-Crawford, Henrietta Dugdale,
Vida Goldstein,
Alice Henry,
Annie Lowe and
Mary Colton. In 1903, the
Women's Political Association was formed. The various suffrage societies collected signatures for monster suffrage petitions to be tabled in Parliament. The results varied. Recently some of these petitions have been transcribed and can be searched digitally.
Towards voting rights The first election for the Parliament of the newly formed
Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 was based on the electoral laws of the six federating colonies, so that women who had the vote and the right to stand for Parliament at a colony (now state) level (i.e., in South Australia including the Northern Territory and Western Australia) had the same rights for the 1901 Australian federal election. In 1902, the Commonwealth Parliament passed the uniform
Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which granted women equal voting rights to men at the federal level, albeit subject to racial restrictions. This franchise explicitly excluded women (and men) who were "aboriginal natives" of Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands (except New Zealand), unless they were already enrolled to vote in an Australian state.
Summary ==See also==