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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 672 ..

MRS CROSS (continuing):

responsibility of women and men. Perhaps Australia could learn a lesson or two from Cuba in this regard.

Here in Australia, our first recognition of International Women's Day took place in the form of a rally in Sydney's domain in 1928. Organised by the Militant Women's Movement-one I know that Mr Cornwell admires with great affection-it called for equal pay for equal work, an eight-hour working day, a basic wage for the unemployed and annual holidays on full pay.

The struggle of the suffragettes is not over. Although we have come a long way, there is really still a long way to go. It has only been a relatively short period of time since you, Mr Speaker, with a little help from me, helped wipe clean the smear of the criminal sanctions attributed to a woman's right to choose in the ACT.

The fight has been a long one, and I do not use the word "fight"lightly. In 1903, nine years after women in South Australia had won the vote, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia formed the Women's Social and Political Union. The union became known as the suffragettes, and they were prepared to use violence to achieve their aims.

In 1905 the suffragettes created a stir when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney interrupted a political meeting in Manchester to ask two Liberal politicians, who just happened to be Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey, if they believed women should have the right to vote. Neither man replied. As a result, the two women got out a banner, which carried the words "Votes for Women", and shouted at the two politicians to answer their questions.

Pankhurst and Kenney were promptly thrown out of the meeting and arrested for causing an obstruction. Remarkably, both women refused to pay the fine, preferring instead to go to prison to highlight the injustice of the system as it was then. Emmeline Pankhurst later wrote in her autobiography that:

The suffragettes refused to bow to violence.

At 5pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MRS CROSS: They burned down churches as the Church of England was against what they wanted; they vandalised Oxford Street, apparently breaking all the windows in this famous street; they chained themselves to Buckingham Palace because the royal family was seen to be against women having the right to vote; they hired boats, sailed up the Thames and shouted abuse through loudhailers at parliament as it sat. Others refused to pay their taxes. Politicians were attacked when they went to work and their homes were firebombed. Golf courses were vandalised.

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