the goal of their desires. The Premier had definitely said that before the session closed a Bill would be introduced to give women the suffrage, and he hoped that next year they would be able to disband their League, its work being finished. The Bill was introduced in 1901 but was lost by 19 ayes, 22 noes.
On Aug. 14, 1902, the bill conferring the Parliamentary Franchise on women passed the Council. It had already passed the Assembly and is now law.
VICTORIA.[1]
In Melbourne an organisation for Women's Suffrage has been in existence some sixteen years, but it is only within the last five years that the question has come within the region of practical politics. The movement suffered from want of concentration of energy. "At one time the original association, though still in existence, was rivalled by other societies with the same object, but more or less tinged with local, class or religious characteristics. This rivalry, though it tended to the growth of the movement, deprived it of force and eventually led to divided counsels and consequently to comparative failure." The Australian Woman's Sphere[2] from which the above words are quoted, goes on to say: "A few years since, largely owing to the patience and tact of the late Annette Bear Crawford, its first Hon. Secretary, there was formed the ‘United Council for Women's Suffrage' which aimed at including representatives of all the leagues that had for their main object, or for one of them, the political enfranchisement of women."
The formation of this Council has been the sign of a new life in the question in Melbourne. At the General Election of 1894 a determined effort was made to secure the return of a majority of members pledged to vote for the suffrage cause. The Government promised a Bill in the session of 1895, and on November 26th the Premier, Sir George Turner, introduced a Women's Suffrage Bill which passed the House of Assembly without a division, but was lost in the Legislative Council by two votes.
The Women's Suffrage Bill passed the Legislative Assembly
