Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its sadness at the death, on 1 March 2025, of the Honourable Dr Rosemary Anne Crowley AO, former Minister for Family Services, former Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, and former Senator for South Australia, places on record its gratitude for her service to the Parliament and the nation, and tenders its sympathy to her family in their bereavement.

I rise on behalf of the government to acknowledge the death of former senator and minister the Hon. Dr Rosemary Anne Crowley AO at the age of 86. At the outset of my remarks I convey the government's condolences formally to Dr Crowley's family and friends, particularly Stephen, Vincent and Diarmuid, Leo and Ella, Peter, Eileen and Gabrielle, and I welcome members of her family who have joined us in the Senate today and again extend my personal sympathies to them.

Nineteen years Rosemary Crowley served in this place—part of consequential reforms, part of a generation of gutsy Labor women who changed this country for the better. Rosemary Willis, later Crowley, was born in Melbourne in 1938. Her convent education was pivotal for the way in which it instilled in her a passion for social justice and community service. Coupled with this was the role of government support, with scholarships enabling her to complete secondary schooling, matriculation and then a medical degree at the University of Melbourne. Her marriage to James took her to Berkeley in California, a heady place to be in the 1960s, amidst the political activism of the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war protests. She used this time to complement her qualifications in medicine, training as a children's and family counsellor, before settling in my hometown of Adelaide and beginning her medical practice. She found her calling in community health care.

Of course, we know that the winds of change were sweeping the campuses of California at that time, and they were well and truly blowing in Adelaide. Rosemary became politically active in the Dunston decade. Active in her local sub-branches in Adelaide's inner south, Rosemary made two—and I say, for the nation, thankfully—unsuccessful tilts for election to the South Australian parliament. At the 1983 simultaneous dissolution she became the last of the 10 senators elected from our state. In all, she would be elected four times to this place, an achievement that places Rosemary Crowley among the most consequential legislators ever to represent our state of South Australia.

Rosemary's political career and advocacy centred on health care, community services and the rights of women. She arrived at the right time to advance these issues and served alongside other intrepid Labor women senators of the era, like Susan Ryan, Pat Giles, Jean Hearn and Olive Zakharov. We on this side remember these women, not just because of what they did—and they did a lot—but also for the legacy they left, because we talk a lot about how Whitlam and Hawke and Keating modernised Australia, but we don't talk enough about the seismic change that is the legacy of these women.

Rosemary and her sisters made the change they recognised was long overdue in policy, in politics and in the culture. They ensured that issues important to women were placed on the political agenda and they also ensured that our party and our parliament now looks more like Australia. I stand here as leader in a government comprising a majority of women in a chamber comprising a majority of women, including my ministerial colleagues Senator Gallagher, Senator McCarthy and Senator McAllister. Now, some might take the progress achieved by these women lightly, but let's remember what it was like back then for them.

In her first speech, Rosemary noted she was one of just 13 women in the government, seven of whom were senators, equating to 12 per cent of the Labor caucus. Now, more than half of the Albanese government are women. That is an extraordinary achievement in itself and such a change from Rosemary's time and also a change from the start of my career. Rosemary Crowley was the first South Australian Labor woman to come to Canberra; I was the third.

Rosemary argued that:

…when women were given a voice: 'they opened huge possibilities for the whole of society. They dramatically extended the agenda, they broadened the topics for discussion …' and that '… it is striving for fair recognition of the variety of talents and contributions that women can make … it is a matter of justice, it is a matter of equity and it is also a matter of best practice'.

Rosemary Crowley was right. Part of the point of equal representation is to see interests represented more equally. We see that every day. We see it in outcomes that improve the lives and livelihoods of women and girls around Australia. We see it in how we are closing the gender pay gap and in higher salaries in feminised industries so women can be paid what they deserve. We see it in better health care for women, with more contraceptive options and menopause options on the PBS, new and bigger Medicare rebates for women's health and endometriosis clinics across the country. We see it in accessible child care.

I spoke at Rosemary's memorial service of the continuing of these reforms today and of the groundbreaking reforms Rosemary was deeply involved in, like Medicare and the Sex Discrimination Act. Remember, until then it had been legal to discriminate on the basis of gender, on the basis of marital status and on the basis of pregnancy. Remember, women were locked out of education, jobs and opportunity, were refused access to home finance and faced the sack for being pregnant. In her work as a doctor and counsellor in the community, Rosemary Crowley had seen many challenges could not be solved at the individual level. Structural problems like health care, unemployment and lack of transport required political action to fix. But she won arguments for publicly funded, needs based child care, child support and enforcing child maintenance arrangements.

The pinnacle of Rosemary's career was her three years as Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women and as Minister for Family Services. She said she was interested in the advancement of opportunities for women—all women—in whatever choices they are making about their lives. She had the opportunity to address the United Nations General Assembly in 1995, as minister, and she oversaw this nation's contribution to the International Year of the Family in 1994. I had the honour at quite a young age of being appointed by Rosemary to the National Council for the International Year of the Family. She progressed and implemented reforms: enhancements to family payments, additional payments for low-income families, maternity allowances, disability support programs, carers pensions, student assistance and youth training allowances. She introduced legislation for cash rebates for the cost of child care for working families and home childcare allowances. I believe Rosemary would be so enormously proud of the reforms the Albanese government have made and how we are supporting cheaper child care, higher wages for early childhood educators, and the three-day guarantee.

When Labor went into opposition in 1996, Rosemary Crowley continued with no diminution in her drive, chairing many committee inquiries into education, employment, health and community affairs. On leaving this place, she spoke about her love of the great Australian Labor Party—in her words, 'warts and all'—and she remained a member the rest of her life, attending local sub-branch meetings where she could pass her wisdom, expertise and passion to new generations of members.

Rosemary Crowley was many things—the first South Australian Labor woman to be elected to the federal parliament, the first woman from South Australia to be a federal minister, and a doctor who prioritised medical care and counselling for women and families at a time when this was far from standard—but, most importantly to her, she was a mother to three beloved sons and a grandmother to two cherished grandchildren. In her first speech Rosemary spoke of what motherhood meant to her, but perhaps the most poignant acknowledgement came from her own children. In Vincent's eulogy he spoke so movingly of the lessons Rosemary had taught her sons—lessons in courage. He spoke of her many passions. Among those passions, he said: 'She loved people, not all people all of the time, but lots of people, lots of the time. Meeting people, talking to people, hearing their stories, telling her stories, arguing, analysing, conceptualising, counselling, celebrating. She loved her friends. She loved her family. She loved her grandkids, Ella and Leo, and I think she mostly loved being a mum too.'

To her family, she gave so much. To a nation, she gave so much and yet, still, she had more to give. She was a mentor to me and to many others. This came naturally to her, so too did her trademark wit. Nurturing and mentoring came naturally because, as Vincent so beautifully described, 'she cared deeply about people'. She saw the innate value in everyone. She believed in humanity and she believed in human potential.

At International Women's Day breakfasts, rather than clamouring over the assembled great and the good, she was often in the wings talking to the staff about their lives and struggles. At the university, where her prolific archives were being preserved, she would stop and chat with a student or an academic, asking what they were studying; how they were finding it; what they found difficult. And, invariably, she would buck them up. As I said at her state funeral on Saturday, her fortitude was osmotic. Certainly, that was my experience as she went out of her way to encourage me in my own political career.

In a business that can be transactional and performative, Rosemary was genuine and generous. She took me out to lunch and offered me her support when I was thinking about standing for preselection. It is hard to express how much that meant, to have the backing of a woman who I admired and looked up to. My Labor Party colleagues will also understand what it meant to have a woman not from my faction supporting me. But, most importantly, she was a woman central to the generation of women who transformed our party and our country. I've had the benefit of her support of me for my entire time in the Senate. And each year I'm proud to take forward her legacy as the custodian of the International Women's Day breakfast in Adelaide. More than 3,000 South Australian women assemble in a tradition that she began and led for 10 years and which she handed on to me.

True to how she valued inclusion, Rosemary always asked how we could keep the cost of attending the breakfast as low as possible. Whenever the menu was discussed, she suggested a cup of tea and a piece of toast. She believed women attended to hear a great speaker and to be in a room with other feminists—not to have a hot, cooked breakfast. Rosemary founded the biggest women's day event in Australia. That tells you she knew what she was talking about. She knew what this meant to all of us. Each year, I am moved by the power of that breakfast, by the chance for women to learn from each other, what it says about feminist solidarity and what it says about how we inherit progress and how we take it forward for our daughters. This year, I had the sad duty to inform the gathering that Rosemary had passed the week before.

In 2015, Rosemary Crowley was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. She was one of a great generation of women who forged the way with all the boldness and courage that's demanded to beat down doors and the humility, humour and perseverance that's demanded when doors sometimes slam in your face. She never let up in the pursuit of a more equitable and just society. She never lost her sense of humour or her sense of fun, whether laughing at herself or tempering the egos of others with her famous sharp wit. In his eulogy, Vincent recalled: 'She loved humour, the bawdier the better. When I was a kid, I remember the moment I realised with surprise that not all mums told dirty jokes.'

I know how much her family grieve her. We all grieve Rosemary Crowley and we will all miss her. But, as I have said, I have no doubt she would rather that we channelled our grief into resolve: resolve to continue the work she and her sister started, to make this—and to keep making this—a more equal country, a more just country, where all and each of us is nurtured and valued as we should be. That is how we can show our gratitude and that is the respect she has earned.

Drawing inspiration from the struggles of those who have gone before to strengthen our resolve today is something we, in the Labor Party, well understand. Dr Crowley did this herself in her first speech when she quoted from 'Bread and Roses'. It is a song associated with the struggle of working women—working women protesting sweatshop conditions and child labour and demanding women's suffrage in 1908. I wish I could sing, because it is much better sung, but I will read this part of the lyrics:

As we go marching, marching in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,

For the people hear us singing, 'Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.'

I express again, on behalf of all of us, our condolences to her friends and family.