The women have succeeded in having federal laws enacted providing that all state employees be paid the same wages for the same work, and that the legal provisions for naturalization permit woman to retain her right of self-government and her individuality. The government will propose a federal law securing uniformity in the marriage laws (laws in regard to marriage, property, divorce, and parental authority).
In all the Australian colonies women have active suffrage, but not in all cases the passive. Wherever they possess the latter they have laid little claim to it:
1. because a part of the capable women believe they can work more effectively and achieve more if they are not attached to a political party;
2. because the established party programmes very frequently embody the demands of the women;
3. because for this reason the political parties expect no special advantage from the women, and it is difficult to secure the support of the great party papers for the women candidates;
4. because the Australian elections also cost money, and the capable women are not always well-to-do.
In 1903, Miss Vida Goldstein announced her candidature for the Federal Parliament and was defeated. In the federal elections of 1906 on an average 58.36 per cent of the registered men and 43.30 per cent of the registered women voted (against 53.09 and 30.96 per cent in 1903).
In two pamphlets,—Woman’s Suffrage in New Zealand, and Woman’s Suffrage in Australia,[31]—the leading men of the youngest region of the world have given their written testimony on the practical workings of woman’s suffrage. These men are prime ministers of the colonies, public prosecutors, the ministers of the various state departments, members of the lower houses in the parliaments, high dignitaries of the Church, the editors of large political newspapers. They all make the most favorable statements concerning woman’s suffrage.
“The women have demanded nothing unreasonable from their representatives, and have always placed themselves on the side of clean politics and clean politicians.” “Woman’s suffrage has brought about neither the millennium nor pandemonium,” and the New Zealanders do not understand why it is that in other countries people “can still become agitated over anything so inherently reasonable as woman’s suffrage.”