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Speaker of the House of Representatives
Liberal Party of Australia, 12 November 2013 to 2 August 2015
Solicitor, actress, Senator and Member of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop (b.1942) , known as a tireless ‘political warrior’, saw her Speakership as ‘the capping of my career’.1 She was the 29th Speaker of the House and the third woman to hold the office.
She was born on 19 October 1942 in Sydney; her father was an engineer and her mother was an opera singer. She attended Roseville Public School and Cremorne Girls’ High School and then the University of Sydney.2 Growing up, she was drawn to the Liberal Party’s ideology of individualism and free enterprise and, as a university student, joined the Killara Young Liberals. In 1966 she married Alan David Bishop, with whom she had two daughters. They divorced in 1992. She gained a professional qualification from the Solicitors’ Admission Board in 1967 while also acting in the television drama Divorce Court and delivering radio broadcasts on legal subjects.
Bishop worked tirelessly for the NSW Liberal Party and was successful in ascending the ranks. Among other distinguished roles, she became its first female president. Bishop was elected to the Senate in 1987, where she clashed at times with government senators. However, her acquaintances outside politics saw her more amiable side, and her portrait by Jiawei Shen is more suggestive of her warmer side than her better-known persona as a political warrior.3
In 1994, Bishop resigned from the Senate to stand at a by-election for the safe Liberal seat of Mackellar in the House of Representatives. She served on the frontbench in both Houses, including as a minister in the Howard Government. She also served on numerous parliamentary committees.In 2013, Prime Minister Tony Abbott nominated Bishop for the Speakership, saying:
she is a formidable character, and I can think of no-one more likely to deal with all of the other formidable characters in this place without fear or favour. 4
As Speaker, Bishop raised controversy on numerous occasions and in 2015 resigned from the position after sustained public criticism of her travel expenses. In 2016, she departed politics as the longest-serving woman parliamentarian in Commonwealth history.
Jiawei Shen
Chinese–Australian Jiawei Shen (b.1948) became a practising artist in his early twenties. In the mid-1970s he was a member of the Shanghai Red Guard painting propaganda portraits during the Cultural Revolution. He completed postgraduate studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and was a professional artist at the Liaoning Art Academy throughout the 1980s. Shen exhibited as a solo artist at the Liaoning Art Gallery in Shenyang and participated in group exhibitions in China, France, Bangladesh, and Tokyo. Forced to leave China because of his painting depicting heroes of the Nationalist movement, he arrived in Sydney in 1989, subsequently drawing portraits of people at Darling Harbour to make ends meet. He has since become a regular finalist in the Archibald Prize and the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. He has also won the Sulman and Gallipoli Art Prizes in 2006 and 2016 respectively. Shen has painted commissioned portraits of Pope Francis and Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, as well as other HMC portraits of Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Speakers of the House of Representatives David Hawker and Bronwyn Bishop.5
Bronwyn Kathleen Bishop
by Jiawei Shen
2017
Oil on canvas
121 x 95.8 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. J Ireland, ‘Madam Speaker Should Give Politics a Shake’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 June 2015, p. 35.
2. Information in this biography has been taken from the following unless otherwise sourced: S Marchant, ‘Bishop, Bronwyn Kathleen (1942–)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021, accessed 30 August 2021.
3. M Koziol, ‘Warrior woman who “blew door off hinges”’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 2018, p. 5.
4. T Abbott, ‘Motion: Speaker’, House of Representatives, Debates, 12 November 2013, p. 6.
5. Information in this biography has been taken from the following: ‘Jiawei Shen‘, National Portrait Gallery, 2018; S Engledow, ‘Shen Jiawei’ the Popular Pet Show’, National Portrait Gallery; ‘Archibald Prize 2011: Jiawei Shen’, Art Gallery of NSW; ‘Jiawei Shen’s Archibald Paintings’, Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture, Western Sydney University. ‘Shen, Jiawei’, A McCulloch, S McCulloch and E McCulloch Childs, eds, The New McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Aus Art Editions in association with The Miegunyah Press, 2006,p. 878. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.