Our Brisbane History

Voters outside polling place Brisbane - 1907

Suffragists Succeed

Votes for Women in Queensland

Woman in Queensland were granted the right to vote in State elections in 1905 and first exercised this right in 1907. The first country in the world to grant the vote to women was New Zealand in 1893. The first Australian State was South Australia in 1894.

The flight for female suffrage [votes for women] began in Queensland in the 1870s when the Premier, Sir Charles Lilley, tried to initiate electoral reform. The flight from that time trough to 1905 was complex and difficult. This was in part because women of the time were so economically, socially and politically disenfranchised that they had very little experience of how to organise a campaign of this magnitude. Women had to learn to organise politically and to take their demands to a hostile or disinterested power structure dominated by men.

The issue of vote for women was part of a broader argument about electoral reform which included the debate about whether plural voting should be discontinued. Under the system of plural voting which applied in Queensland at the time, only male property owners could vote and they could vote in every electorate in which they owned property. Among women agitating for the vote not all supported the abolition of plural voting. This, at some stage of the campaign for women's suffrage, led to a lack of cohesion between women's groups.

From 1889 a number of women's groups including the Queensland Women's Suffrage League, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Women's Equal Franchise Association and the Women's Electoral League all fought for the vote for women. These groups were led by women such as Emma Miller, Margaret Ogg, Leotine Cooper and Eleanor Trundall. Although the right to vote was granted in 1905, women were not allowed to present themeselve as candidates for Parliament until 1915. Irene Longman was the first woman to become a member of the Queensland Parliament and represented the electorate of Bulimba in 1929.

It is said by many honourable and true men outside this Chamber that the exercise of the franchise by women will tend to brush away that delicate, innate feature in her disposition – her modest, from which she receives her great power and influence for good in society.

Hon B. Fahey, Legislative Council, Electoral Franchise Bill, 25 October 1904

My name has been mentioned…as one who had an electoral right in a great many constituencies. I think at one time my name was on 21 electoral roles. Whenever I became a trustee fro a married woman or children who were not entitled to exercise the franchise in the district where their property was situated, I felt it to be my duty to get my name on the roll in their interests, and I still think so.

Hone A. J. Thynne, Legislative Council, Electoral Franchise Bill, October 1904