Download Fragment

Monday, 23 May 2011
Page: 4201

Mr BROADBENT (McMillan) (13:15): Injustice has a finite life span. The pendulum will always swing to the right. Born out of inequality and oppression, International Women's Day recognises the economic, political and social achievements of women. On 8 March this year, International Women's Day celebrated its 100th anniversary. It is also a day celebrated worldwide that honours those who lived with this inequality and oppression and who fought to end it. Those first campaigners marched for women's rights to work, to vote, to be trained, to hold public office and to end discrimination. In March 1911, more than one million women and men attended rallies to campaign for women's rights.

Last night I was blessed to see the ABC Compass program on Patricia Brennan. As a former missionary doctor cum feminist theologian, Patricia is best known for her very public role in the fight for the ordination of women in Australia, a country which now has 400 Anglican women priests, 200 deacons and two women bishops. What is less known about Patricia is that she was also a specialist in forensic medicine and that most of her work in recent years dealt with sexual violence against women and children. The program is a moving biopic of an extraordinary woman of our time. I love how she was described: a woman of wild intelligence and uncommon valour, a seeker after truth and justice, lavish with kindness, quick to laugh and a lover of life.

Only a week ago at St James Church, Pakenham, we celebrated 13 years of service by the Reverend Hilary Roath. The Reverend Hilary Roath was one of those 400 Anglican women priests. I was asked almost 14 years ago by Neil Speedie what I thought about a female priest. I said, 'That is no problem for me. All of my life I have been surrounded by women working in the ministry and taking leadership roles in our community.' Hilary began her service at St James when the issue of ordination of women and the appointment to churches was still controversial. Hilary was a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a pastor, a confessor, a confidante, a priest, a community activist and a friend. She lived her life in the exhilaration of birth, the celebration of marriage and the sorrow of death every week of her congregation's life. She was a teacher, a storyteller and a defender of the faith. She helped turn the annual Christmas Carols by Candlelight from a small singsong to a grand celebration of the birth of the living God, with thousands of people attending the celebration each year. Hilary laughed with the joyous, cried with the broken-hearted and walked with those with a wounded spirit. Hilary grew and changed from a woman who happened to be a priest to a priest who happened to be a woman. She stands upright today as a great achiever: a woman in a man's world, much loved and appreciated, carried by her personal courage and her grace. Hilary retired on 15 May, and many tears were shed. I was honoured to speak at the service and I spoke about a large candle, of the type you see in churches. They are very thick and, when you first light them, they are easily snuffed out, but as they burn over the years and the wick and the flame go deeper into the candle they become nearly impossible to snuff out because the candle goes down so low that, even if you do blow it out, the heat in the wick and the power of the hot wax usually flame the wick again, and then you have to try to put it out again. It cannot be put out.

In my address I said that Hilary was like that candle in the church. With all the trials and tribulations of a woman in that service at that time, over these 13 years, she was the candle that could not be blown out. Whilst the member for Canberra talked about the history and importance of women through the generations, we should never forget the women who are around us today, equally serving and equally contributing, like Patricia Brennan, who has, sadly, passed away. What a great legacy she leaves and what a great legacy one of her own, Hilary Roath, leaves in our local community.