Gillard, Bishop, Wong: yes. Lambie, Hanson: no.

Annabel Crabb’s new ABC series Ms. Represented is a 4 part look at “firsts” for women in Australian parliament.

From early struggles for basic of facilities in the House, to persistent problems of harassment that plague the system to this day, Crabb speaks to those who have been at the face of change.

“We can’t tell the whole story of women in politics over the last 100 years. There are so many interesting women to talk to. But we frankly, couldn’t afford to fly around and talk to them all,” she tells TV Tonight.

“We’ve got about a dozen and a half interviewees. Mainly, we’ve chosen them on the basis that they were the first woman to do X, Y, or Z. One of the amazing things about our system is that a lot of our firsts are still alive, still in Parliament.

“We’ve obviously gone to Julia Gillard”

“We’ve obviously gone to Julia Gillard, the first female prime minister. We’ve also talked to Quentin Bryce, the first female Governor General, she’s the only non-serving politician that we interviewed. Plus the first Defence minister, first Foreign minister, first Immigration minister to be a woman, first Indigenous woman in the Reps and in the Senate, the first Muslim woman (in Parliament), the first woman to serve in both houses.”

The series hears from voices on the left, right and in between, including Bronwyn Bishop, Sarah Hanson-Young, Cheryl Kernot (the first female leader of the Democrats Janine Haines died in 2004) and Anne Aly, Julia Banks, Julie Bishop, Linda Burney, Emma Husar, Natasha Stott Despoja, Ros Kelly, Carmen Lawrence, Marise Payne, Nova Peris, Margaret Reynolds, Kate Sullivan, Judith Troeth, Amanda Vanstone & Penny Wong.

Despite varying persuasions of party, sometimes there is a shared experience.

“In Episode Two, we have a montage of them all saying exactly the same thing about what happens when you’re the only woman in a room in a meeting. That’s quite an amazing piece of television.”

“She didn’t consent to be involved”

But there are also profile independents who are not included, though not always by design.

“We didn’t ask Jackie Lambie because she was not a first in that sense, even though she’s been a highly significant Senator,” says Crabb.

“We asked Pauline Hanson a number of times but she didn’t consent to be involved. It would have been really interesting to talk to her. But we didn’t have the chance.”

The series also acknowledges the huge achievement by Australia to be the first independent nation in the world where women could both vote and run for Parliament (NZ was first to give women the vote; there are contentions that another territory may have been first with Parliamentary rights).

But it was a blunder in 1894 that gave women in South Australia an unexpected outcome.

“Australia’s suffragists were really ahead of the ballgame”

“Nobody was campaigning for women to have the right to run for Parliament because that didn’t happen anywhere in the world. Australia’s suffragists were really ahead of the ballgame. In South Australia, the premier at the time, Charles Kingston, agreed to undertake to give women the vote. He presented the legislation to Parliament and it needed a majority to pass. It had a series of really settled opponents, particularly one guy, Ebenezer Ward who had this idea to kill off the bill,” she explains.

“He said, ‘I’m going to amend the bill to give women not only the right to vote, but to run for Parliament as well.’ His view was, strategically, this was such a shocking idea and so repellent -not even the suffragettes were asking for that- that it would immediately kill the bill, like a poison pill. But actually, it didn’t.

“The vote went through, so by accident, he unintentionally managed to escalate the enfranchisement of women, rather than kill it off!”

“It was quite an extraordinary own-goal!”

Ms. Represented airs 8pm Tuesday on ABC.