On this day: Dorothy Tangney elected for Labor to the Senate
80 years ago, Dorothy Tangney became the first woman elected to the Senate. This is the story of a true Labor trailblazer.
In 1943, Dorothy Tangney rose in the Australian Senate to deliver her maiden speech. She was the only woman in the chamber. She looked at the assembly, and said:
“Every citizen has at least two rights—freedom from fear and freedom from want. In order to safeguard those rights the Commonwealth Parliament will need to take over a great deal of work that has hitherto been regarded as the prerogative or duty of the States. If this war has done nothing else it has at least made our people Australia-minded. We are no longer Western Australians, or Victorians, or New South Welshmen. We all are Australians, and we come here with a common duty to perform, not in the interests of any special section of the community, but in the interests of Australia as a whole.”
It was to the protection of these rights of the citizen to the benefit of all Australians that Tangney dedicated her political life.
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Tangney was born in Perth in 1907, the third of nine siblings. Her mother Ellen was a staunch Labor supporter and her father Eugene an ardent unionist.
Tangney was studious and deeply intelligent. Aged just 16 she began her studies at the University of Western Australia, helping financially support her family by simultaneously working as a student-teacher. Even at this stage her political allegiance was clear - while at the university she helped found its Labor Club.
Politics was a male-dominated endeavour – both in the life of the political parties, and parliament itself. In 1921 Tangney witnessed a trailblazing moment when Edith Cowan was elected to the state parliament – the first woman to serve as an MP in Australia
Tangney graduated from the university in 1932 with a diploma of education. These were difficult times: the era of the great depression. The devastation of the crash deeply affected her own family, with her father losing employment. Dorothy taught in schools in the industrial heartland of Fremantle, witnessing the devastation wrought by the downturn on her working-class pupils and their families.
Tangney was an active member of the Teachers’ Union and her local Labor organisation, alongside a range of social and civic organisations.
She sought to transfer this commitment to social change and ethos of contribution to the parliamentary realm. In 1936 and 1939, Tangney ran as the Labor candidate in the conservative stronghold of Nedlands in the state election, unsurprisingly being defeated both times. She contested a spot for the Senate in 1940, also without success.
She later recalled: “Racing round the country delivering speeches was half the thrill of the election.” It was estimated at the time that in the week before one polling day she covered more than 2000 miles in her small car, “Peggy”.
In 1943, Australia was at war. The Curtin Labor Government was returned in a landslide election. Tangney contested the election on the presumed unwinnable fourth spot on the ALP’s WA Senate ticket.
BUT! Amid the massive pro-Labor swing at the election Tangney secured a casual vacancy by defeating Senator Latham (who had replaced Senator Johnston after his death).
Tangney took her place in the Senate on 23 September 1943. She began her maiden speech by saying:
“I . . . realise my great honour in being the first woman to be elected to the Senate. But it is not as a woman that I have been elected to this chamber. It is as a citizen of the Commonwealth; and I take my place here with the full privileges and rights of all honorable senators, and, what is still more important, with the full responsibilities which such a high office entails.”
Famously, the election of 1943 also saw Enid Lyons elected for the conservative United Australia Party in the House of Representatives, making her the first woman elected to that chamber. The famed photo of the two women walking into the Old parliament House together has now been immortalised in stone.
Suffice to say, that all Tangney achieved she did so in spite of the rampant sexism of the time. Even in her first year in the Senate she repeatedly had to deny rumours of engagements and proposals with male MPs she would spend time with.
Tangney served in the Senate until 1968, led in her work by her Labor values. She argued for equal pay and equal opportunities for women workers, advocated for increased use of federal powers in social services and housing provision, and worked diligently to enhance opportunities for the poorest.
Her staunch support for education, and the establishment of the Australian National University, led to her becoming a founding member of the ANU Council.
In 1966 she spoke against Australia’s involvement in the war on Viet Nam, outlining that:
“I do not want to see the youth of this generation and the next going through a period similar to the terrible period that we of our generation have seen and those before us have seen … The whole trouble is that we in Australia cannot get at the truth of the matter concerning Vietnam … I do pray that the Government will not continue to conscript national servicemen for this service overseas.”
For the 1967 half senate election, Tangney was shifted from the head of the WA Labor Senate ticket to third place, the unwinnable spot, and was defeated.
In her valedictory speech, Tangney noted:
“The last 25 years that I have been in this place have been a very happy period for me. I do not seem to have been here as long as that. When I was about to come here one of my pupils at the school where I taught said: ‘Have a good time while it lasts’. That is the best advice that anybody has ever given to me because no matter how tough the going has been - at times it has been tough - I have always been able to look on the bright side.”
Senator Dorothy Tangney spent most of her political life as one of the few women in the room – if not the only woman in the room. Her trailblazing career was one of courage and conviction.
80 years on, her Labor legacy endures.
