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 Senator for Western Australia
Australian Labor Party, 21 August 1943 to 30 June 1968

Dorothy Tangney (1907-1985) was Australia’s first woman senator and the first Labor woman in federal Parliament.¹ A ‘staunch supporter of the underdog and a champion of women’s rights’,² she was a tireless advocate for education, and health and welfare services for all Australians.

Born in Perth, Tangney was a gifted student who at just 16 combined work as a student–teacher with her studies at the University of WA, founding its Labor club. She graduated with a BA in 1927 and a DipEd in 1932. In 1929, she established the Fremantle Young People’s Ideal Club, providing activities for disadvantaged children, and was a foundation member of the Boys’ Employment League. A member of the Teachers’ Union, she was also vice-president of the state Parents’ and Citizens’ Association.³

Tangney’s social and political activism drew her to politics. By 1939, she was president of the Labor Party’s Claremont branch and for many years after, served on the Labor Party state executive. She campaigned unsucessfully for election to state parliament (1936 and 1939) and the Senate (1940). However, Labor’s landslide electoral victory in 1943 saw her elected to fill a casual Senate vacancy following Edward Johnston’s death and the defeat of his initial replacement, Charles Latham. She declared in her first speech:

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 …⁴

Tangney championed improvements to social services and housing, increased pensions, a national health system, and free university education. Promoting the needs and interests of women as equal partners in Australian society, she worked to address ‘disabilities in citizenship rights and duties, trades and professions, industry, family life, including divorce and maintenance, the Criminal Code, and the guardianship of children’.⁵ Her keen interest in international relations led her to become the first Australian woman to attend an Empire Parliamentary Association conference in London (1948).

Tangney lost her seat at the 1967 election, having been placed third on the party ticket. Just prior to leaving the Senate, she was appointed DBE. In her valedictory speech, she remarked that ‘[p]eople have been kind enough to say that I have done a good job. What I have done has been only very little in return for all that the job has done for me’.⁶ She became a founding member of the ANU Council (1951–68). She died in Perth and was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery.

Archibald Douglas Colquhoun
Melbourne-born artist and teacher, A D Colquhoun (1894-1983) attended the National Gallery School, where he studied drawing under Frederick McCubbin before becoming a staff artist for the Herald. He continued to train under Charles Richardson before meeting Max Meldrum, who would become his mentor and have a major influence on his work. Between 1924 and 1926, Colquhoun travelled across England and Europe, exhibiting at the Société des Artistes Français (Paris) and the Royal Institute of Painters (London). On his return to Melbourne in 1926, he established a studio and art school with his wife and fellow artist, Amalie Feild. Noted as a dedicated teacher and a prominent painter, Colquhoun was an influential figure in the Australian art scene. His students included William Dargie, Harley Griffiths and Rex Bramleigh. Colquhoun won various art prizes throughout the 1930s including the Crouch Prize and the Newman Prize for Australian Historical Painting, and was a regular entrant and finalist in the Archibald Prize.⁷

Dorothy Tangney
by Archibald Douglas Colquhoun
1946
Oil on canvas
117 x 101.5 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection

References
1. M Kerley, ‘Tangney, Dame Dorothy Margaret (1907–1985)’, The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate Online Edition, Department of the Senate, Parliament of Australia, published first in hardcopy 2010; C Lawrence, ‘Tangney, Dame Dorothy Margaret (1907–1985)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2012; A Hough, ‘Two parliamentary milestones for women—75 years of women in the Commonwealth Parliament and Australia’s 100th female senator’, FlagPost blog, Parliamentary Library, 20 August 2018. Websites accessed 20 August 2021.
2. ‘Dame Dorothy Tangney dies’, The Canberra Times, 4 June 1985, p. 3, accessed 20 August 2021.
3. Kerley, op. cit.
4. D Tangney, ‘Governor-General’s Speech: Speech in Reply’, Senate, Debates, 24 September 1943, p. 30.
5. ‘Mr. Chifley meets women to discuss rights’, The West Australian, 9 June 1949, p. 3, accessed 20 August 2021.
6. D Tangney, ‘Valedictory’, Senate, Debates, 13 June 1968, p. 1810–11. [7] Information in this biography has been taken from the following: PW Perry, ‘Colquhoun, Archibald Douglas (Archie) (1894–1983)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed 25 March 2021.[6] D Tangney, ‘Valedictory’, Senate, Debates, 13 June 1968, p. 1810–11.
7. Information in this biography has been taken from the following: PW Perry, ‘Colquhoun, Archibald Douglas (Archie) (1894–1983)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed 25 March 2021.