Vocal advocate of traditional values

WAYNE CRAWFORD reflects on the life of the late Shirley Walters

“I AM definitely not a women’s libber,” Shirley Walters pronounced in one of her first interviews as a Liberal Senate candidate in 1975.

Indeed, after her election she proudly included “housewife” among her occupations listed in her biography in successive editions of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Handbook.

“I believe the creation of a happy, stable home is the most important thing a woman can do,” she said in her inaugural parliamentary speech.

(Mary) Shirley Walters, housewife, mother, nurse, a life member of the Liberal Party, and the first woman to represent Tasmania in the Senate, died peacefully on Monday after a short illness. She was 91.

Shirley Walters was a formidable personality with a strong Menzian view, which she inherited from her father, Sir Eric Harrison, who had been a member of federal Parliament and a minister in Joe Lyons’s Government in the 1930s and then the deputy to Sir Robert Menzies and a minister in the fledgling Liberal Party governments of the 1940s and 1950s.

She learned her politics tramping the hustings as a teenager, campaigning in Sydney for her father in the days when electioneering was done from the back of a truck with blaring loud speakers and crowds of hecklers. .

In a condolences ces motion in the Senate nate this week the Governovernment Leader in thee Senate and Attorney-Generaleneral George Brandis describedribed her as “in every sense a daughter of the Liberal Party”.

She worked as a bank clerk then a nurse at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, before she married gynaecologist Dr David Walters. She left nursing and became a fulltime mother and housewife. They moved to Hobart where Dr Walters set up an obstetrics practice, and when their four children were old enough Shirley returned to nursing at St John’s Hospital, Hobart.

Although she became active in community organisations such as Right to Life Tasmania it was not until the Liberal Party invited applications for Senate preselection in 1975 that, encouraged by family and a wide support base, she nominated and became politically active. She said at the time she was responding to rapid social changes being pursued by the Whitlam Government, which she believed “were occurring

very quickly and very radically and people were frightened”.

She was the only woman nominated by the Liberals. Her election from the uncertain fifth position on the ticket — controversially ahead of a sitting Liberal senator — made her the first female senator to represent Tasmania and only the second female to enter federal Parliament from Tasmania (the first was Dame Enid Lyons who, coincidentally, served alongside Shirley’s father in the Menzies Cabinet).

She was a among “class of 1975” (which famously also included Michael Hodgman and Bruce Goodluck) who entered federal Parliament in the double dissolution election brought on by the dismissal of the Whitlam Government.

In an era when Tasmanian Liberal senators cherished their independence, she crossed the floor 14 times to vote against her party on issues as diverse as constitutional change and apple and pear industry reform.

Her first speech in the Senate emphasised Tasmania’s disadvantage caused by excessive freight rates for Bass Strait shipping. She was one of those credited with successfully lobbying for the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme

Much of her career focused on advocating for health, welfare and social issues.

She chaired a Senate committee that produced landmark reports on youth homelessness and abuse of prescription and over-thecounter drugs. A campaigner against pornography, she tried, unsuccessfully, to ban X-rated videos and tighten rules on R and M-rated material.

Shirley Walters will be remembered as a trailblazer for conservative women. A forceful advocate of traditional family values such as marriage and parenthood, she proudly fought to acknowledge that socalled “women’s liberation” was not the only way to fight against discrimination and for affirmation of the rights and role of women.

During much of her parliamentary career she endured the pain from back injury sustained in a road crash in 1982.

Shirley Walters is survived by her four children the eldest of whom, Dr Rob Walters, is a noted Hobart GP and national advocate for men’s health.

WAYNE CRAWFORD was the Mercury’s political editor during Shirley Walters’ time as senator.