Clip description
Recorded by the ABC in Sydney on 21 April 1944, Senator Dorothy Tangney reads the maiden speech that she originally presented in the Senate in Canberra on 24 September 1943.
Curator’s notes
The speech begins with formal salutations as Senator Tangney’s first parliamentary duty is to move the Address-in-Reply to the Governor-General, Lord Gowrie. Tangney acknowledges the historic occasion of being the first female federal senator. Her maiden speech contains the main areas of interest for her personally in the political sphere but also details government plans for the postwar period. Though she refers to the current wartime situation her focus is on the future.
In this speech Tangney demonstrates her ability to describe political concepts in straightforward language though occasionally a reference is oblique, perhaps because to speak of it plainly was still too shocking. For example, she refers to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour not by name but as ‘what was done so treacherously nearly two years ago’. She does not avoid unpopular subjects such as what she believes are legitimate reasons for the level of taxation.
Though she refers to Australia as part of the British Empire, Tangney articulates the new identity of Australia as a Pacific nation which shares common concerns with ‘the peoples of New Zealand, the United States of America, Canada, China and other Pacific countries’.
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