Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to pay my respects to the life and work of Joan Kirner. She was a trailblazer for women in public life, and a person who showed how politics could be meaningful and honourable, and packed with opportunities to make a difference. I offer my condolences to her family and her many devoted friends.

I am grateful to have heard throughout this debate a number of lovely and heartfelt reflections from people who knew Joan well and who worked with her in Victoria. I thank them for sharing those stories in this place so that they can be part of the national record. Joan Kirner was a figure of national significance for a number of reasons. I would like to take the opportunity to remember Joan specifically in the context of her great contribution to bringing women into politics.

Over the last three decades we have witnessed profound change in the opportunities for women to be involved in public life and to be involved at the highest level of government. As a member in this place I know, and I want all young Australian women to know, that Joan Kirner was a pioneer of that change.

Joan Kirner, like Carmen Lawrence, my predecessor in the seat of Fremantle, was asked by her party to take on the position of premier in very difficult circumstances. Make no mistake, both Joan and Carmen brought their integrity, intelligence and strength of character to the task of reinforcing state Labor governments in trouble. Their conduct and communication skills were critical in limiting the scale of what were, by that stage, inevitable electoral losses. In doing so, first Carmen Lawrence and then Joan Kirner broke through the political glass ceiling in order to prove the possibility and capability of female leadership at the highest level in their states of Western Australia and Victoria respectively. I acknowledge, of course, that it was Rosemary Follett in the ACT in 1989, the year before Carmen became premier, who first held a position of leadership in either state or territory governments.

The evolution of female political leadership in Australia has come a long way since those trailblazing achievements—and the story of that evolution is a distinctively Labor story. Since that time we have at some point seen a women as premier or chief minister of every state and territory government except South Australia, we have seen women as governors and as Governor-General, and of course we have seen Australia's first female Prime Minister.

Kristina Keneally and Lara Giddings, like Carmen and Joan, led their governments to elections, but lost. Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard fought elections from government and won. Earlier this year Anastacia Palasczcuk won from opposition. All these milestones have built steadily upon one another—not in some direct or structural continuum, of course, but rather in the way that culture has always developed: with first a concept and a principle; and then the pursuit of that concept and the argument from that principle until what was for the longest time theoretically possible but highly improbable, suddenly becomes realistic, then logical, then real.

Joan Kirner did a lot more than open the door and show the way. Joan had experienced gender discrimination; she knew it from her time as a teacher; and she knew it could only be defeated by an intense effort that would require women working together within the structures of power in this country.

Joan herself—as a number of the contributions to this debate have shown—was an active and powerful force of encouragement; she was an enabler of women at all levels and in all ways, from the personal to the practical. I was delighted and humbled to receive a congratulatory and supportive letter from Joan upon my first election to the House of Representatives in 2007.

When we look beyond government leadership alone as a marker of female political participation and we celebrate more widely the number of female parliamentarians—the number of women in the Rudd-Gillard ministries and cabinets; the first, second and, yes, even third woman to have the role of Speaker in this place—we should do so with the acknowledgement that in the last 30 years there have been few people who have done more than Joan Kirner to push and promote, to bolster and boost women to have—or know they should have—an interest in representative politics.

Others have spoken in detail about Joan Kirner's work through EMILY's list, and I do not need to explain again how crucial that kind of funding support is, or what the incredible vote of confidence that goes with that funding support means when you are in the early stages of a campaign, when you are on the brink of making a contribution to Australian policy and public life.

Joan Kirner was named a Companion of the Order of Australia for her eminent service to the parliament of Victoria and to the community through conservation initiatives, contributions to gender equality, development of education and training programs, and the pursuit of civil rights and social inclusion. On receiving this honour Joan said:

[Now] young women and their daughters know that they can be premiers, they can be leaders of the state, and they can be leaders of the nation.

Deputy Speaker, I am proud beneficiary of EMILY's list. I am one of hundreds of Labor women who owe a great debt to the work, energy and vision of Joan Kirner, and I know that Australian society as a whole is better for the increased participation of women that Joan Kirner made real.

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