Senator judith troeth biography of barack

Picture: Penny Stephens

I have studied women presidents and the impact female leaders have had on women’s lives through the law. It is therefore unsurprising that I am often asked, are women better leaders? Do they make a difference for fellow women? I offer a cautious yes. Yet I have come to realise that perhaps the question we need to ask is ‘how?’. The wonderful Mary Crooks AO asked that important question at the Victorian Women’s Trust’s recent event, Women Represent: Power, Politics & Making a Difference.

As a life-long activist and an academic by day, I found myself in the kind of conversation that we cannot afford not to have. Crooks brought together four great women, creating the space for a dialogue enriched by the incredible political expertise that they share across party and generational lines: Victoria’s Judith Troeth (1993-2011) who served close to three decades in the Australian Senate; the Honorable Jenny Macklin, who served twenty-three years as the federal Member for Jagajaga (1996-2019); and currently serving Samantha Ratnam, leader of the Victorian Greens and member of the Victorian Legislative Council, and Victoria’s Independent Fiona Patten. That considered and thoughtful conversation pointed to three clear answers to the question of ‘how’ women in politics have impact: being part of a critical mass; demonstrating solidarity; and having an imagination, perhaps a thirst, for a more gender equal world.

A critical mass as an essential pathway to equality

I have always held the view that getting more women into politics is key to tackling gender inequality in Australia. Clearly, this is a widely shared perspective. Troeth and Macklin both served at a time when there were far fewer women in both Houses of our national parliament. They fought for change when a critical mass of women in Australian politics was a dream, and not one within arm’s length.

BACK IN OCTOBER 2005, Tony Abbott, the Howard government’s health minister, introduced two bills to amend the Therapeutic Goods Administration Act. It seemed like a routine, innocuous piece of parliamentary business, but the outcome was something quite remarkable. Minor adjustments to the functions of a statutory body resulted in the medical abortifacient RU486 becoming available to Australian women, and this after a decade’s denial. The vote on RU486, applauded at the time, has been the one outstanding example of women in parliament making a difference, as women, for women. Four years later it gives rise to the obvious question: why just this once?

It all began in 1996 when Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Senate, agreed to let another bill pass if a veto over RU486’s supply was given to the health minister, making it the sole “restricted” good on the TGA’s list of pharmaceuticals. This unusual arrangement said a lot about the ongoing resistance to abortion, despite several landmark state rulings that had liberalised access to surgical procedures for nearly a quarter of a century (a state of affairs that is still unsatisfactory, as recent events in Queensland have shown). With Tony Abbott eager to apply the veto, access to one of the safest forms of termination was barred. No matter that it had been widely available overseas for several years with no appreciable ill effect, and was safer for the woman than carrying a pregnancy to term if used under medical supervision.

But less than a decade later the gender distribution in parliament had changed. By 2005 there were twenty-four women in the Senate and thirty-four in the House, a leap of some 17 per cent. Lyn Allison, a Victorian senator elected in the year of the Harradine amendment, was the new Democrat leader. By now a seasoned parliamentarian, she seized the opportunity to lift the ban and was able in several deft stages to parlay the government pla

Senator TROETH (Victoria) (11.00 p.m.) - 24-6-08

I rise tonight to speak of the case of a constituent in my home state of Victoria, Mr Dally Messenger, who has had a most unfortunate experience with the ACCC. Mr Messenger is a funeral celebrant. As the Senate would know, funeral celebrants emerged in around the 1970s from the institution of marriage celebrants. Celebrants of both marriages and funerals try to negotiate a reasonable fee. While marriages are usually a very happy affair, funerals of course are in a different category, with most of the relatives being in a very bereaved state, and funeral directors need to deal very carefully with them.

Historically, funeral directors, who have charge of the mechanics of a funeral, and mainstream churches agreed on a fixed fee for officiating a funeral ceremony. In the past, this fee was traditionally low because of the high church-going population of the era. In many cases, funeral celebrants do a great deal of work leading up to a funeral by discussing the deceased with the family, preparing a eulogy and so on. Sometimes their work can take up to between 20 and 30 hours per funeral.

Celebrants nowadays get a small fee for their service from the funeral directors, usually in the vicinity of $150 to $400. When a person dies, people usually go to a funeral director, not a funeral celebrant. The director will charge between $6,000 and $10,000 for the funeral and the celebrant's fee comes from that figure.

In Victoria, the funeral directors agreed to pay a little more to celebrants on the strict condition that, like the clergy, it was a fixed fee. Over the years, the celebrants have always tried to have their fee increased in line with inflation and CPI. There was usually resistance, but the f

Australian politician

Judith Mary TroethAM (née Ralston; born 3 August 1940) is a former Australian politician. She was a Senator for Victoria from 1993 to 2011, representing the Liberal Party. She served as a parliamentary secretary in the Howard government from 1997 to 2004. Prior to entering politics she was a schoolteacher and farmer.

Early life

Troeth was born on 3 August 1940 in Brighton, Victoria. She is the daughter of Eileen Mary and Keith Malcolm Ralston.

Troeth was educated at Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne. She later completed the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, as well as a diploma in education. She worked as a schoolteacher from 1962 to 1965 and from 1980 to 1987, teaching at schools in Portland and Heywood. She farmed cattle and sheep with her husband near Heywood for three decades.

Politics

Troeth became an officeholder in the Liberal Party in the early 1980s, serving as president of her local branch and holding various positions on committees within the state branch of the party.

Senate

Troeth was elected to the Senate at the 1993 federal election, to a term beginning on 1 July 1993. She established offices in Warrnambool and the Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows.

In 1994, Troeth was appointed as a shadow parliamentary secretary under opposition leader Alexander Downer, retaining the role following Downer's replacement by John Howard in 1995. She also served as chair of the Senate's scrutiny of bills committee from 1994 to 1996.

Following the Coalition's victory at the 1996 election, Troeth was appointed chair of the foreign affairs, defence and trade legislation committee. She was appointed as a parliamentary secretary in the Howard government in 1997, initially under John Anderson in the Department of Primary Industries and Energy. In 1998 she moved to the