The Queensland Centenary of Women's enfranchisement

Tuesday, January 25, 2005 was the centenary day of women in Queensland getting the vote.

Seven failed attempts were made to extend the franchise to women in Queensland between 1890 and 1904 before success was finally achieved by the passing of the Elections Acts Amendment Act on January 25, 1905.

When Queensland became a separate State in 1859 there were stringent conditions before your name could be entered on the voters roll. You had to be a man of 21 years, a natural born or naturalised subject of Her Majesty or legally made a denizen of Queensland, and in possession of a freehold estate to the value of £100 for at least 6 calendar months

Those specifically excluded from voting included:

• Those of unsound mind.
• Anyone in receipt of aid from a charitable institution.
• Those who had been attainted or convicted of treason, felony or other infamous offence unless pardoned or having completed their sentence.
• Persons in the military service or the police force.
• Clerks of Petty Sessions.
• Paid police magistrates.

Thus, instead of suffrage for all males over 21, as was the case in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, the new colony adopted a system designed to favour conservative pastoral interests.

The new colony could be fairly described as Australia’s equivalent of the American Wild West, controlled by wealthy pastoralists. Like the Wild West there were vast lands to be opened up, native inhabitants to oppress, and gold to be found. However in the American Wild West women were already enfranchised.

It wasn’t until 1872 that there was anything like male suffrage in Queensland. The retention of the six months provision disadvantaged many because they were unable to fulfill the residency qualification, or own or lease property. Rich men could make multiple registrations and vote in any electorate in which they held a property. This was known as plural voting.

Although there were two houses of parliament those qualified to vote could only do so for the Legislative Assembly which was elected for five years. Three-year parliaments were introduced in 1890, by which time there were 60 electorates returning 72 members. The members of the Legislative Council were appointed for life. It was abolished in 1922.

The suffragists (or suffragettes) campaigned through their various organisations. They tended to be white, Anglo-Saxon women, based mainly in the towns, especially Brisbane, and by and large from the upper and middle classes. Poorer women, particularly those who worked in the factories and sweat shops, didn’t have time to worry about the vote. They were not organised before 1890 when Emma Miller and May Jordan founded Brisbane’s first women’s trade union to try to improve the appalling conditions which existed for working women.

During the 1880s working women in Brisbane had to cope with typhoid, bad sanitation, inadequate pure water, and poor housing. Girls were denied access to higher education, women workers were restricted to manual tasks, and, of course, female wages were lower. They weren’t even able to own their own property until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1890.

The first women’s suffrage organisation in Australia appears to have been founded in Melbourne by Henrietta Dugdale in 1884. Queensland’s first such organisation, the Queensland Women’s Suffrage League was formed on February 4, 1889. It was, however, short lived and existed for only two years.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had established a branch in Brisbane in 1885 and took up the suffrage cause in 1891. The WCTU also lobbied the federal government in support of the federal franchise.

The WCTU’s decision to pursue the women’s vote was no doubt influenced by the fact that it sought the repeal of harsh legislation such as the Contagious Diseases Act of 1868 which specified that women, but not men, could be forcibly examined for sexually transmitted diseases and then incarcerated in hospitals if they were infected. Also the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1891 which maintained the age of consent at 12.

Emma Miller was active in various political organisations, including the Workers’ Political Organisation, of which she was a foundation member and later a life member. It was the forerunner of the Labor Party. She was also president of the next suffrage organisation, the Women’s Equal Franchise Association (WEFA), formed in 1894.

So by 1894 there were three women’s pressure groups campaigning for the enfranchisement of women in Queensland, and all were expanding throughout the state. They used the tried and true campaigning methods of public meetings, demonstrations, protests, resolutions, relentless leafleting of MPs, and petitions to parliament. They seem to have worked reasonably well with one another from the time when the abolition of the plural vote was promised in 1899, until just prior to the December 1903 federal election when two new suffrage groups were formed.

The first of these was the Queensland Women’s Electoral League (QWEL) and the other group was the Women Workers’ Political Organisation (WWPO) which had been formed by Emma Miller and the other women from WEFA. They campaigned through the unions and Labor organisations on a platform of equal pay for equal work, the nationalisation of monopolies, and equal marriage and divorce laws.

All these organisations could take heart from events in Australia and overseas. New Zealand became the first country in the world to enfranchise women in 1893, although they were not given the right to stand for parliament at the same time. Then with the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, all persons (including Aborigines) allowed to vote for the lower house of their state at that time received the federal franchise with the passing of the Australian Commonwealth Act of 1900. This meant that women in South Australia and Western Australia were able to vote in the first federal election which was held on March 29 and 30, 1901.

However, Queensland women had to wait until the Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 extended this to include women in the rest of Australia. Queensland women voted for the first time in the second federal election on 16 December 1903. Thus Australia became the second country in the world to enfranchise women, and the first to allow them to stand for parliament.

The idea of women’s suffrage was first put before the Queensland Parliament in 1870 by Premier Charles Lilley during a debate on electoral reform. He lost office the same year but remained a staunch supporter of the enfranchisement of women. In 1892 William Taylor made the suggestion, but did not move a motion, that propertied women should be added to the electoral roll. The first serious attempt at reform was made by Richard Hyne with a private member’s Bill on 29 July 1890. This Bill was quite clear and unencumbered, and gave women the vote under the same conditions as men. Hyne pointed out that it was a matter of justice: they paid taxes without representation, and they had to obey laws they had no say in formulating. Although the bill was shelved and no vote was taken, the issue had been given an airing.

The other attempts followed in 1894 including the Powers Bill which was encumbered by including the abolition of plural voting, and the Glassey Bill by including all itinerant workers. Plural voting was very dear to the non-Labor side of politics as it was one of the bases of its power, and the proposals in the Glassey Bill for enfranchising itinerants were clearly unworkable. Inevitably both bills failed to gain enough support in the Legislative Assembly.

During the premiership of Robert Philp (1899-1901) a Government Bill came before the house that will probably go down in history as one of the silliest pieces of legislation ever placed before an Australian parliament. It included one-adult-one-vote and enfranchised the police force, but the Bill also prescribed that men would in fact get two votes if they had two or more children who were born in “lawful wedlock” and in Queensland. The local press, and even the overseas press, had a field day with the so-called “baby vote”.

The Rockhampton Bulletin reported:

Notwithstanding all the silly things the present government have done we do not like to think they seriously anticipate placing such a farcical law on the statute book … As we have said, the principle of the measure is rotten, the details are a burlesque, and it is an elaborate legislative joke.

Hansard paints a vivid picture of the parliamentary debate and, even though it was a Government Bill, it was shelved. One MLA evoked a scene whereby men would turn up at the polling booth with their two children, to show they were entitled to two votes; another asserted that it was phallic worship. Someone interjected that it was the law of procreation, one member branded it the physical capability vote, and another, the stud vote.

In 1903 Arthur Morgan became Premier, and a Government Bill to give women the vote and abolish plural voting was introduced into the Legislative Assembly in September 1904.

Known as the Electoral Franchise Bill, it was introduced into the Legislative Assembly on September 27, 1904. It completed its second and third reading on October 11 without a vote being taken, as there was clearly overwhelming support for it. It then went to the Legislative Council but the Council baulked at abolishing the plural vote and it was decided that the Bill would not be read again for another six months. The Council was promptly dubbed “the House of Prejudice, Privilege and Property” and “the slaughterhouse of reform”.

On December 1904 Premier Morgan announced an extraordinary scenario to force the passage of his franchise legislation. Parliament was recalled on January 4, 1905. This was unprecedented, and was a great inconvenience. Country members would have had difficulty in getting home for Christmas and back again by 4 January, and sitting in parliament in January without air conditioning would have been unpleasant.

The Legislative Council subsequently acquiesced, and the Elections Acts Amendment Act of 1905 was assented to.

The arguments supporting the enfranchisement of women were simple, and changed little during the 15-year struggle. Richard Hyne had clearly enunciated them in 1890. It was a matter of justice that women should have equal voting rights with men. They paid taxes but had no representation; they were subject to all the laws, yet had no voice in formulating them; they had the right to hold property, conduct business; and sue and be sued; and, they were permitted to vote in municipal elections.

Arguments against women’s enfranchisement ran the whole gamut from the ludicrous to the bizarre. The objections fell into six categories: 1) women did not want it; 2) they were unfit to use it; 3) they were too easily led; 4) it wasn’t in the male interest; 5) fear of the unknown; 6) women should be revered and uncontaminated.

Objections that women did not want the vote were not only pure speculation but also flawed, as there was no compulsion to register to vote.

The second objection that women were unfit to vote drew upon notions of women’s intellectual capacity not being the same as men’s, and the fact that women were not able to fight to defend their country. They were alleged to have defects in their character, be narrower in their views, or more conservative.

The third objection was based on the premise that women would easily be misled by designing males. One MP was of the opinion that “in 99 cases out of a 100, women will vote as their husbands, or brothers, or male friends tell them”, and another went one step beyond that, asserting that “if there was a good-looking young man he will get their vote irrespective of his politics”.

The fourth objection, that women’s suffrage was not in the male interest, included such things as the concern that women would neglect their families; corrupt the system; parliamentary institutions would suffer; the divorce rate would go up and the birthrate down; they might even get into parliament. Some members were worried their womenfolk might not vote for them.

The fifth objection, fear of the unknown, tended to be based around the lack of precedent and experience. Australia had survived until then without it; it might lower the tone of parliament; public opinion was not sufficiently advanced.

The sixth objection revolved around the idea of womanhood as needing to be kept in a gilded cage or placed on a pedestal to avoid contamination by the hurly-burly of politics. Members spoke on this with considerable inventiveness: for example, there was no way a woman would register to vote if she had to state her age.

Finally, reasons for not giving women the vote were advanced which fitted no category but the bizarre. Only the colony’s plain and ugly women wanted the vote. It would increase the power of the clergy. It would be the end of civilization as we know it.

Although Queensland was the second last state to enfranchise women, when this took place in 1905 without any extreme consequences, it became the second state to give women the right to sit in parliament. This was legislated in 1915 with the passing of the Elections Act.