Anne Levy first female presiding officer of any Australian parliament house; honoured for her work after politics

South Australian Labor female firsts:  Molly Byrne, Labor MP fof the House of Assembly from 1965, and Anne Levy, who became president of the Legislative Council.
Images courtesy wednesdayswoman and State Library of South Australia

Molly Byrne (from 1965) and Anne Levy (1975) were the first Labor party women to enter the South Australian parliament. Levy’s entry into the state’s Legislative Council was even more significant in 1986 when she became that upper house’s president –  the first woman to chair any house of any parliament in Australia.

Levy had graduated with a bachelor and master degrees in science from Adelaide University, where she worked as a senior tutor in genetics, before being Labor's first female elected to the Legislative Council in 1975, and only the second female  – after the Liberal and Country League’s Jesse Cooper – elected to the Legislative Council.

Levy was the first Labor president of the Legislative Council until 1989 when she became a government minister with portfolios including local government, state services, cultural heritage and status of women. She ceased being a minister after Labor's election loss in 1993 and she retired from the council in 1997.

Levy was conferred with a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government for her work as honorary consul for France in South Australia from 2000 to 2005. In 1986, she was named Australian Humanist of the Year for contributions to abortion law reform, voluntary euthanasia, family planning, decriminalisation of prostitution, and other reforms.

Levy was a founding member and a patron of the Humanist Society of South Australia. In 2011, she was made an officer of the Order of Australia.

South Australian Labor’s first female MP was Molly Byrne who represented the House of Assembly seats of Barossa (1965-70), Tea tree Gully (1970-77) and Todd (1977-79). She was the second female elected to the House of Assembly and the third female in the South Australian parliament after the Liberal and Country League’s Jessie Cooper and Joyce Steele from the 1959 election.

Barbara Wiese (1985) was the first Labor woman and Legislative Council member to be a minister, from 1985 to 1994, mainly in the tourism portfolio. June Appleby (1985, House of Assembly) and Carolyn Pickles (1989 Legislative Council) were the first Labor female government whips.