In 2004, as the centenary of women achieving the right to vote in Queensland elections drew near, plans were made to hold a conference: ‘A Celebration of the Centenary of Women's Suffrage in Queensland and the Achievements of Queensland Women in Parliament’. The conference was about Queensland women in Parliament, a joint endeavour of Professor Kay Saunders of the University of Queensland and the Royal Historical Society of Queensland. The conference was held on Saturday, 5 February 2005 in the Red Chamber (the former Legislative Council Chamber) of Parliament House. Speakers were assembled to present a history of the attainment of women's suffrage in Queensland and to recognise the achievements since 1905 of Queensland women as politicians in both the state and federal spheres. The majority of those papers appear in this issue of Queensland Review.

The centenary of the passage in early 1905 of the Act to Amend the Elections Acts, 1885 to 1899, which extended the right to vote to white women in Queensland, marks a moment of great importance in the political and social history of Australia. The high ground of the history of women's suffrage in Australia is undoubtedly the passage of the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act that gave all white women in Australia political citizenship: the right to vote and to stand for parliamentary office at the federal level. Obviously this attracted the most attention internationally, given that it placed Australia on the short list of communities that had done so to date; most women in the world had to await the aftermath of the First or Second World Wars for similar rights.

This call to arms sounded by the Worker towards the close of the campaign for womanhood suffrage in Queensland captured well the class antagonism that prevailed within the movement. At this late stage, there was little chance that the conflicting elements within the movement could put aside their differences and unite in a concerted effort to secure the female franchise. To all intents and purposes, the struggle for womanhood suffrage had become a class war.

In a thumbnail sketch of Queensland's first female parliamentarian, Irene Longman, in 1931, the Clerk of Parliament Charles Bernays commented on the novelty of a woman in Queensland's Legislative Assembly. ‘The innovation,’ he averred, ‘takes long to convert itself into a common-place. The public are slow to acquire a habit.’ Bernays' comment was apposite. Although the Elections Act of 1915 enabled non-Indigenous women as well as men to stand as candidates for Queensland's Lower House, no woman took up this opportunity until Longman's successful bid for the seat of Bulimba in 1929. In the 31 Queensland elections held from 1918 to 2004, women were, until very recently, a tiny minority when compared to the thousands of examples of male candidates for the same period.

The year 2005 is an important one for Queensland women for three reasons. It is the centenary of women getting the vote (25 January 1905). It is the 90th anniversary of women getting the right to stand for Parliament (23 November 1915). Finally, it is the 76th anniversary of the first woman being elected to the Queensland Parliament (11 May 1929).

In 2001 I was invited to give a public lecture at the Centre for the Study of the History of the Twentieth Century, a scholarly research institute within the University of Paris. The invitation was extended by Professor Stephane Dufoix, who writes on the internment of enemy aliens in World War II, one of my academic specialisations. However, I was not asked to speak about this area of expertise. Indeed, it turned out to be a ‘Don't mention the war’ event. Rather, Professor Dufoix and his colleagues were fascinated by Pauline Hanson and were interested in an Australian perspective on the rise of extreme right-wing populism and the Down Under equivalent of the French les laissés-pour-compte (‘those left behind’) or les paumés (‘the losers’).

Women won the right to vote in Queensland in 1905, but had to wait until 1915 and the election of the first Labor government to govern in its own right before they became eligible to stand for Parliament. It was then another 14 years before the first woman, Irene Maud Longman, was elected. She, however, lasted only one term as she had won a safe Labor seat, Bulimba, in the anti-Labor swing of 1929 as a Country–National candidate. When Labor returned to power in 1932, her parliamentary career was terminated. It was to be another 34 years until the second woman, Vi Jordan, was elected. She won Ipswich West for Labor in 1966, and held it until defeated in the strong anti-Labor swing of 1974, having served eight years. Although she was anxious to reclaim the seat in 1977, an internal ALP power struggle saw pre-selection go against her in favour of David Underwood. Thereafter, Labor did not have another successful female candidate until 1983, when Anne Warner won the former Liberal seat of Kurilpa. Meanwhile, Rosemary Kyburz had won the then ALP seat of Salisbury for the Liberals in 1974; she held it until beaten in 1983 by the future Labor premier, Wayne Goss. Vikki Kippin had meanwhile become the first woman to represent a Far North Queensland, seat when, also in 1974, she won Mourilyan for the Nationals, losing it in 1980 to Labor. There was a strong indication that, had she won in 1980, she would have become the first woman Cabinet minister (Reynolds, 2002a). Another six years elapsed before that occurred, when Yvonne Chapman entered the ministry.

I have drawn the title for this paper, which celebrates the 100-year anniversary of the abolition of plural voting in Queensland, from S.R. Davis, who described the electoral experience of the Australian states as:

‘Forget Policy — I've Got Great Legs!’ That newspaper headline was one of the most interesting if not anomalous banners to appear during the 1998 federal election campaign. It was run in the Daily Telegraph as the header to an article about Pauline Hanson, who was busy campaigning for the Queensland seat of Blair in the state elections. As one might expect from the headline, the story dismissed any consideration of Hanson's political agenda in favour of blatant and highly sexualised comment about her very feminine physical attributes. Whilst this sort of media attention openly negated Hanson as a serious political force, it was indicative of the way the media had come to portray her since she arrived on the political scene two years earlier. Moreover, it was symptomatic of the media's widespread concern with portraying female politicians of all parties in accordance with worn-out assumptions and clichés, which rarely — if ever — were applied to their male counterparts.

We women of the twenty-first century owe the early women seekers of female franchise a considerable debt. Without their intellectual and sometimes physical bravery, we would not have the range of privileges we now take for granted as our right.

A century ago, there was a very real concern that if women moved into what was then considered an entirely masculine sphere, it would somehow be very damaging to their femininity. The notion of women in Parliament — something that was yet to be achieved — was considered unbecoming.

In some ways I feel like I don't quite fit today's celebration of the centenary of suffrage for Queensland women in Parliament. So far we've been hearing much about the state Parliament and very little about federal Parliament, I must somehow or other balance that up.