• The ABC’s new documentary series “Ms Represented”, hosted by Annabel Crabb, looks at the triumphs and struggles of Australian women in parliament.
• The show examines how the rise of women’s rights impacted Indigenous Australians, and the confronting language that was used in Canberra..
• “The hard thing is that the move to include women is what drove the exclusion of Indigenous Australians,” Crabb said.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australia likes to congratulate itself on being the first country in the world to give women the right to vote and run for parliament. But what we’re not so keen to talk about is that the very legislation that empowered so many women, also stripped Indigenous Australians of democracy.

Enter Annabel Crabb’s new ABC documentary series “Ms Represented”, which charts the history of Australian women in parliament. The series features interviews with pioneering female politicians from across the decades and across the political spectrum.

It all starts in the South Australian Parliament in 1894 when Ebenezer Ward amended the Adult Suffrage Bill to include the right for women to run for parliament, assuming the bill would be defeated and it would quash the suffragette movement altogether. He was wrong.

When the newly formed federal parliament debated the Franchise Act in 1902, which would give women across Australia the right to vote, it too was amended at the last minute — to exclude Indigenous Australians. The language used in that debate — forever on record in Hansard — was derogatory to say the least, especially towards Aboriginal women.

“It needs to be understood fully what happened in 1902,” Crabb told Business Insider Australia. “Yes it was a great advance for women’s suffrage but it was at the same time just a shocking removal or exclusion of Indigenous Australians from the design of our brand new democracy.”

“The hard thing is that the move to include women is what drove the exclusion of Indigenous Australians,” Crabb added. “That’s a really hard thing, because we are used to congratulating ourselves on being a leading democracy in the inclusion of women — we were the first in the world to give women the right to vote and run in federal elections — but this terrible thing was done at the same time which has had this disproportionate influence on the lives of First Australians.”

The scene in “Ms Represented” where female politicians are presented with the Hansard records of the debate on the Franchise Act in 1902 is confronting. Many of them are left speechless; Amanda Vanstone can’t bear to finish reading it. It rests on Linda Burney, the first Indigenous woman to sit in the House of Representatives and current Member for Barton, to explain the gravity of the language used in the parliament back then.

“When you think back, she was born at a time where the colour of her skin actually prevented her from being a part of the democratic system,” Crabb said of Burney. “Extraordinary to think that over the length of her life she would be in federal parliament and I have to say, [have] such a gracious approach to the wrongs that have been done in that parliament.”

Which raises the question: how does anyone overcome that traumatic history and put their hand up to run for parliament?

“It’s an expression of hope and faith, I suppose, and it’s a great act of generosity,” Crabb said.

“I think in the current political environment we’re all looking for opportunities to take offence or get angry, it’s really worth keeping in mind the extraordinary ground that has been covered in terms of reconciliation and grace and forgiveness for these Indigenous Members of Parliament to take their seats in good faith and serve in a parliamentary place where such dreadful things were said about their families and their people. I found that just unbelievably moving.”

“Ms Represented” is a real labour of love for Crabb. The series — which airs on ABC TV and iview from July 13 — involved a year of production and juggling schedules and border closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Quentin Bryce and Kate Sullivan very kindly came into northern NSW to meet up for interviews because we couldn’t go to Queensland although they were allowed to come into northern NSW,” Crabb explained.

“We brought Margaret Reynolds over from Tasmania to South Australia to interview her because we couldn’t go to Tasmania. I popped over to Perth as soon as we were able to go to WA to interview Julie Bishop but our director actually directed it remotely from Sydney.

“We used every hack in the book to get these interviews done.”

The fact that all these women went above and beyond to go on-camera is a real testament to how much they wanted their stories to be told.

And what stands out in particular is a universal story that most women across Australia can relate to: not being heard.

One after another, these female politicians all tell the same story of being in party room meetings where their ideas were ignored, only for their male colleagues to then take credit for those very ideas.

“The fact that without prompting, all of these women ranging ideologically from Bronwyn Bishop on one end to Sarah Hanson-Young on the other, told their experience of not being heard in all-male meetings and their stories were so identical that we were able to cut them together. It was almost like they spoke in an inadvertent chorus. I was surprised how identical those accounts were,” Crabb said.

“I hope that there will be men who watch it and kind of understand that invisible geography that confronts women in decision-making bodies, because I think it’s not something that men would necessarily always notice but women are all aware of that pattern and that experience. I think women across all sorts of organisations have had some experience of that phenomenon.”

“It’s powerful when you see them all speaking with one voice, testifying to that experience.”

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