Florence Cardell-Oliver

Dame Annie Florence Cardell-Oliver DBE (1876–1965), politician, was the first woman cabinet minister in Australia and, at 70, the oldest person in Western Australia to attain full cabinet rank. Cardell-Oliver grew up in Melbourne before moving to England with her first husband. After he died, she and her second husband moved to Western Australia. Cardell-Oliver became president of the Western Australian Nationalist Women's Movement and the Albany branch of the Women's Service Guilds. In 1929 she was vice-president of the WA branch of the Nationalist Party, and in 1934 published Empire Unity or Red Asiatic Domination? She served in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly as the Nationalist member for Subiaco from 1936. Appointed an honorary minister with no portfolio in the McLarty-Watts Liberal-Country Party government in 1947, early the next year she became honorary minister for supply and shipping. As minister for health from 1949 to 1953, she introduced a free-milk scheme for schoolchildren in Western Australia and was a pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis by legislating for compulsory chest x-rays. She retired in 1956, aged 80.

This glamorous photograph captures Cardell-Oliver with an expression of integrity and resolve, wearing one of the lavishly trimmed hats she favoured. It was taken at Broothorn Studios in Melbourne, whose scores of well-known sitters included Nellie Melba, Walter Burley Griffin and Sidney Myer.

Gift of Chris Nielsen 2016