Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great honour to present this motion here today, as women have played a role in our Defence Force since 1899. Today, 20 per cent of our service personnel are women. Whilst their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers answered their country's call, so too have successive generations of daughters, wives, mothers and sisters.

When World War I broke out, the role of most women in Australia was that of unpaid homemaker. Whether married or single, women generally stayed home to look after the household and any children or dependants. During the four ensuing years of war, many women took on different paid and unpaid war roles, serving in the Australian Army as nurses, volunteering in the Red Cross, working for soldiers' comfort funds and raising funds for wartime charities that worked overseas.

In World War II, almost a third of working-age women would participate in paid work, many in roles unavailable to them before the war. Valuable duties were also performed by women volunteers, often without any government funds, to address manpower shortages. During this time, the Australian Women's Army Service, Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force, Women's Royal Australian Naval Service and the Australian Women's Land Army were established to free men from non-combat roles with women who filled crucial positions as cooks, drivers, agricultural labourers, signallers, intelligence and anti-aircraft gun crewing. Many of these women were born and bred in my community or would later settle in the Lyne electorate. They were women like Mary May Hogan, from Cundletown, who joined the Australian Women's Army Service in June 1943 and, as part of the Central Bureau, an Allied intelligence unit, intercepted and deciphered Japanese military and naval radio messages; Uraine Harper, who joined the Women's Royal Australian Air Force during World War II and later settled in Taree; Doreen Rosenbaum, who joined the Australian Women's Army Service in World War II; Dorothy Greening, who served in Tripoli, Crete, Borneo and Singapore as part of the Australian Army Nursing Service in World War II; Dulcie Balderstone, who enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force in December 1944 and worked as a stores clerk; and Una Keast, a young nurse who keen for adventure, who signed up to serve as soon as war was declared in 1939. During the course of World War II, Una nursed under canvas in the war zones of Greece, narrowly escaping German invasion; in the trenches in Crete; in the dust in the Middle East; and in the jungles of New Guinea.

They included Eunice Hilda Oakeley, who joined the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps and became an invaluable supporter of the local veteran community; Annie Beatrice May Starling, who was posted to Rocky Creek in the Atherton Tablelands, a 2,000 bed hospital under canvas, and then in Borneo treated POWs before eventually returning home and settling in Tiri in the Upper Manning; Lucy Monk, a Taree local, who was part of the 52nd Search Light Battery; and sister Hannah Pankhurst, who at the age of 22 enlisted with the 3rd Australian General Hospital in July 1915 and commenced duty on Lemnos, where she took care of the Gallipoli wounded. She later was moved to Cairo and then Brighton Hospital in England before eventually returning to the Manning and continuing her lifelong career and devotion to nursing at the Manning River District Hospital. There are many of my constituents today that remember her great work there.

We will be forever proud and grateful for the contributions of all Australian women who served and are serving today. Indeed, I had the great pleasure last year, when I participated in my first Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, at Williamtown, to be hosted by Wing Commander Vicky Bezuidenhout, who's the senior commanding officer there. It was a great program, and I thank her most sincerely for her support while I was there.

As I come to conclude here, I want to thank the President of the Taree sub-branch of the RSL for his discussion with me at the Taree Hub Market that led to this motion today and for our meeting last week in front of the fantastic display at Club Taree, which recognises local women who've served. We will remember them. Lest we forget.

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