In the landmark 1943 election, Dorothy Tangney was the first woman to be elected to the Australian Senate.
A member of the Australian Labor Party, she served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1943 to 1968. Tangney was the first woman elected to the Senate and one of the first two women elected to federal parliament, along with Dame Enid Lyons. She served nearly 25 years in the Senate, being re-elected on four more occasions before her defeat in 1967.
This is Dorothy Tangney’s Maiden Speech to Parliament 24th September 1943, read by Izabella Yena.
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While we're offstage, we begin this new initiative by experimenting with non-fiction texts and poetry in Great Australian Speeches, recreating chilling ghost stories in a dramatic reading of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and will be exploring audio plays when we can return to the studio.
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Published on 17 July 2020