Tony Smith: Women’s strength changed our nation

When the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, Australia had passed through its toughest democratic test. But our democracy was also changed. Today, we should honour the women who from federation to the end of World War I played key roles in the building of our nation, writes Tony Smith.

A little more than a century ago, our nation was simultaneously jubilant, relieved and inconsolable following the end of what they had called the war to end all wars.

Our federation was little more than 13 years young when war broke out, in the middle of an election campaign, as it happened. And when the election took place on September 5, 1914, the government changed from Liberal to Labor. During the war, the issue of conscription tested our democracy at two plebiscites in 1916 and 1917, dividing Labor and the nation, leading to a change of the government on the floor of the House of Representatives and the creation of a new Nationalist Party.

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When the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, Australia had passed through its toughest democratic test. But our democracy was also changed. While the first federal parliament wasn’t perfect, it was pioneering. At the first opportunity, the election of 1903, women were given the right to vote and stand for election to federal parliament, a first for women anywhere in the world.

Australian women were active participants in our democratic destiny in a way women in the United Kingdom, the United States and France were not because there, they were still prohibited from voting and would be for years.

On this Anzac Day, let’s also recognise the significant role Australian women played during the war.

Throughout the war, women were a significant presence at the ballot box, having an equal say in the election of members and senators and playing a key role in the outcome of the conscription debates. Vida Goldstein was as voracious in her determination to stop conscription as the great soprano Nellie Melba was in her unabashed support for the Yes case. Many women were No voters because they didn’t want anyone else to go through the pain they had experienced in losing a loved one. Others were for conscription because it might end the war sooner and bring their sons, brothers and husbands home from their hell. Of course, it would be far too long, nearly another quarter of a century, before the first women were elected to the House and the Senate, at the 1943 election. But what should not be discounted is the critical role women played during World War I.

Over the centenary of Anzac, our natural and understandable focus was on the 100th anniversary of each battle, from the landing at Gallipoli, to the final battle at Montbrehain.

Who knows how many of the nearly 160,000 wounded ultimately survived and came home thanks to the care and comfort of the Australian nurses?

But on this Anzac Day, let’s also recognise the significant role Australian women played during the war. More than 2000 nurses volunteered overseas, some with the Red Cross, many others with the Australian Army Nursing Service. They volunteered from here and from abroad, experiencing unimaginable trauma. In so many terrible cases, the nurses were the soldiers’ last comforting presence as their lives ebbed away from horrific wounds.

IN equal measure, they nursed so many wounded and saved so many lives. Who knows how many of the nearly 160,000 wounded ultimately survived and came home thanks to the care and comfort of the Australian nurses?

On the home front, women were critical to the war effort and their efforts transformed Australia for the better.

The Red Cross was established in Australia only days after the outbreak of war. In Lilydale, Nellie Melba was elected the first president at a meeting at the Athenaeum Hall. Across the nation, women raised funds, produced supplies for the Diggers and, critically, raised morale, in the darkest days of a bloody war they feared would never end.

Dame Nellie Melba was elected the first president of the Red Cross in Australia at a meeting at the Athenaeum Hall in Lilydale.

They raised families, ran farms, lost husbands, sons, brothers, brothers-in-law and cousins, and as they grieved, they kept up the fight here in Australia to do all they could to bring about victory as soon as possible. The governor-general’s wife, Lady Munro Ferguson, who established the Australian Red Cross, transformed Government House in Melbourne into a work and dispatch station for volunteer women.

The residents of Lilydale learned from Melba that the war was over. She’d heard of the armistice from a navy contact over the phone (phones were as rare then as they are prolific today). She drove to Lilydale from her famous home at Coldstream and rang the fire bell to gather the locals to welcome the peace together.

Her efforts and those of so many others fostered and solidified volunteerism in Australia, a spirit of service that continues to benefit us today. When the armistice was signed, prime minister Billy Hughes was in England. On November 13, acting prime minister William Watt rose in the House of Representatives, then still sitting in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, and read a message from the King marking the end of hostilities.

World War I nurses in Lemnos Island in Greece.

After praising the Anzacs, Watt delivered a moving tribute to the women of Australia and the “courage, fortitude and self-sacrifice” they had displayed over the previous four years. They were, Watt said, “worthy mothers, wives and sisters of the great Anzac breed”, deserving of recognition for “their splendid courage and work” as the fighting raged.

It was a fine and fitting acknowledgment of the women who had served their country with quiet heroism during the war. It’s fitting that more than a century on, we remember them.

Tony Smith is the federal Member for Casey and Speaker of the House of Representatives