Biography has moved on since the writing of Ecclesiasticus: ‘Let us now praise famous men and their fathers that begat them!’ I am not sure that now there is such a bias, but rather the abysmal representation of women in parliament is the reason for there being so few biographies and autobiographies about Australian women politicians. Those that we have are, for the most part, of little value to the political scientist. (There is no shortage of major biographies of, say, Margaret Thatcher (Young 1989; Campbell 2000; 2003) and Indira Gandhi (Frank 2001).

In Australia there is Susan Ryan’s Catching the Waves (1999). There is Cheryl Kernot’s biography (O’Reilly 1998) and then autobiography (2002) (the reason for its low sales in part being because her book tour was cancelled immediately after Laurie Oakes’ expose in The Bulletin and on Channel 9 of her relationship with Gareth Evans). There are Dame Enid Lyons’ several books of memoirs (c1949; 1965; 1972), and autobiographies by Zara Holt (1968) and Hazel Hawke (1992). There are Kerry Chikarovski’s autobiography, Chika (2004), and Franca Arena’s Franca: My story (2002). Pauline Hanson is covered in Margo Kingston’s Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson trip (1994) and John Pasquarelli’s The Pauline Hanson Story (1998).

Other books include Junie Morosi’s Sex, Prejudice and Politics (1975) and Anne Summers’ account of her early life (2000); regrettably it appears that we are not going to see a volume covering her period as a senior adviser to the Prime Minister. After these, I am struggling to think of other books by and about women politicians, public servants and those who worked in and around a parliament house. One other book that should be noted, surprisingly not mentioned during the workshop, is Diane Langmore’s Prime Ministers’ Wives: The public and private lives of ten Australian women (1992). A woman whose account of her time in the federal Parliament House we sadly miss is that of Ainslie Gotto, although Ian Hancock has acknowledged his debt to her for the assistance she provided when writing John Gorton: He did it his way (2002).