Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is an incredible honour to be able to stand in the Australian parliament and speak on this condolence motion for Susan Ryan and to follow so many of my Labor comrades in reflections on her extraordinary life and extraordinary contribution to Australian society. She was many things and it is very difficult to contain them to just a series of adjectives, but she was an absolutely proud feminist. The member for Brand made that point very clear. It was really the hard-slog work of women like Susan Ryan that paved the way so that all of the Labor women you see before you today can stand in this parliament. A lot of my colleagues made note of the fact that her first election slogan, which was one that she carried for many years, was 'A woman's place is in the Senate'. Later in life, I remember a conversation with her where she said, 'We need you in the House, in the Senate and, indeed, in all realms of politics where decisions are being made. We need feminists in those positions'—women who appreciate the structural inequalities that continue to exist in Australia.

Whilst we rightly praise Susan for the role that she played in leading the changes that were quite radical for Australia at the time and culminated in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, Susan faced a number of rejections of that bill before getting to that point. By 1984 there was a certain level of maturity and an understanding of some of those issues. Australia had just signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Sex Discrimination Act was the perfect measure for the implementation of that international commitment here in Australia. If Susan Ryan had done nothing else in her life, that one piece of legislation would have been a most important contribution. It changed the lives of Australian women forever and in a very good way. It is really very difficult to imagine what life was like for women prior to that piece of legislation.

My colleague from Brand made reference to the extraordinary lived experience that Susan brought to the Senate. She was a brilliant scholar. She trained to be a teacher and had a Commonwealth funded scholarship to undertake her studies. Then she got married, and, for this 'wrongdoing', she was asked to repay it. She was already a graduate from her degree. She had already graduated, but she was asked to repay the Commonwealth scholarship because she was now a married woman—and we couldn't possibly be supporting married women, because their place was definitely not, at that point, in this House or in the Senate. I guess it is little wonder that Susan Ryan, having lived through that experience, came to the Senate with a fire in her belly to ensure that she would never be silent when she confronted discrimination against women in this nation.

As I said, she tried to get that bill passed through the Australian parliament as a private member's bill originally. One of the great strengths of Susan Ryan was that she was a collaborative worker and she really didn't have a lot of time for the factional divisions that often take up a lot of time in this establishment. She didn't have much time for that. She reached out across political parties to try and get the job done. She had an appreciation that she had a certain amount of time in this place, and she was going to make a difference. She didn't waste her time. Having been defeated in her efforts to get a sex discrimination act across the line with a private member's bill, she waited and waited and worked across the aisles and got people engaged in that process and did what women are exceptionally good at doing, and that is actually bringing people together to make things happen. She got that Sex Discrimination Act passed through parliament, and we all remain so very deeply thankful for her persistence and her dogged determination there. Had she not been the brilliant feminist, the great scholar, the great visionary and the pragmatic warrior that she was, we might not have seen that piece of legislation in Australia.

Chair, are you looking at me to segue out?

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