Florence Cardell-Oliver


Dame Annie Florence Gillies Cardell-Oliver, DBE was a Western Australian politician and political activist, often known publicly as simply Florence Cardell-Oliver.
She was the longest-serving female State Parliamentarian in Western Australia, serving in parliament from 15 February 1936 to 7 April 1956, until her record was broken in September 2011 by Liz Constable.

Background/family

Born Annie Florence Gillies Wilson to Johnston Wilson and Annie Thompson, she married, firstly, David Sykes Boydan. They travelled to England, where David Boydan died on 5 September 1902. Later she remarried, to Arthur Cardell-Oliver and they had two sons. The family migrated to Western Australia and Arthur Cardell-Oliver registered as a doctor in 1912. During the First World War she spoke at recruitment meetings for the armed services.
Her husband, an honorary captain in the Army Medical Corps Reserve, joined the Australian Imperial Force, and served in England before requesting his appointment be terminated. He then set up a medical practice in South Melbourne and retired in 1924 due to ill health. The family travelled to England where he died on 15 September 1929. She was buried beside Arthur in St Columb Minor churchyard, Newquay, Cornwall.

Women activism

Florence was the first woman to get a full Cabinet rank in Australian parliament, and was thoroughly involved in conservative women's organisations. Through this she made certain acts where she sponsored legislations connecting to the public health of women and children. In 1935, an invite given by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was present at a congress in Istanbul of the International Suffrage Alliance of Women that represented the women in the Australian Federation of Women Voters. Cardell-Oliver was also the first woman to be suspended from the Legislative Assembly, which happened in 1942.

Political career

Cardell-Oliver unsuccessfully stood for the federal seat of Fremantle against John Curtin in 1934. After this time her husband shortly had died and she decided to move to Western Australia and to become the vice-president of the State branch of the Nationalist Party. In 1934 she published her own book titled "Empire Unity or Red Asiatic Domination?" This outlined the economic measures that she thought would stop communism at the time.
In 1936 Florence was elected as the Nationalist member for Subiaco in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, and in 1949 became the first Australian woman to attain full cabinet rank when she was made Minister for Health. Two years later she also became a member of the Select Committee on the Educational System in 1938. Florence was a political women and did much work with what she believed in. In 1939 she organized a campaign to go against free birth-control clinics. On 3 September 1941, she went against her own party, at the time, though unsuccessfully moved for the abolition of the death penalty.
On 1 April 1947 she was met with an honorary minister in the McLarty-Watts Liberal-Country Party government and on 5 January 1948 Florence became the honorary minister for supply and shipping. She retained these portfolios until the government was defeated in February 1953. Influenced by her experiences with undernourished children in London, she sponsored the Free Milk and Nutritional Council, and, as minister, introduced a free-milk scheme for Western Australian schoolchildren. Cardell-Oliver brought the State to the forefront of anti-tuberculosis campaigns by legislating for compulsory chest X-ray examinations. She later retired from her place as a Liberal Party She was, also a delegate to the British Commonwealth League, London.
She was a women's activist in Western Australia between 1936 and 1956 and a party organizer from 1936 to 1956.

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