The longest-serving female parliamentarian in Western Australia has announced her resignation from politics, effective in March 2025.
Donna Faragher MLC, the only current female member of the Legislative Council from the Liberal party, announced she would not enter the bid for her Upper House seat as the member for East Metropolitan Region in Perth in WA’s 2025 election.
“It is an honour and privilege to serve as a member of parliament and to represent the East Metropolitan community in the Legislative Council, a region where I have lived all my life,” Faragher told the AAP.
Her resignation will mark 20 years serving in WA state politics, the longest a female member has served in either house in the state.
Faragher has had a trailblazing career for women in politics in WA. When she was elected in 2005, she became the youngest woman from the Liberal party to enter the WA parliament, and the second youngest overall. Faragher was 29 years old.
Faragher quickly joined the shadow cabinet ministry and, when Colin Barnett’s Liberal government won the 2008 election, she became the youngest woman in WA to hold a cabinet ministerial office. At 33, she served as the Minister for Environment and the Minister for Youth.
Faragher continued working for the Liberal party after resigning from the ministry in 2010, when she had her first child. After a six-year stint as a parliamentary secretary to the premier, she re-entered the ministry as Minister for Planning and Minister for Disability Services in 2016.
In her inaugural speech in 2005, Faragher acknowledged her youth, but showed how she could use it to her advantage in what would become a 20-year career in parliament.
“By standing here today, I acknowledge that I am a relatively young member; indeed, the youngest Liberal woman to have stood in either house of this state Parliament,” she said.
“Therefore, there are many things that I have not yet experienced, but I feel that through my own experiences to date and those of my peers in their 20s, 30s and 40s, I can positively represent the issues, aspirations and challenges facing these Australians.”
Later in her speech, she acknowledged that it was a Liberal government in Western Australia that was the first in the country to promote a woman as a Minister.
“Although I do not suggest that we should ever rest on our successes, Liberals do have a proud history, and I believe our achievements should never be forgotten or rewritten to suit other people’s ends,” she said in her speech.
Gender make-up in parliament
Currently, there are seven members from the Liberal party holding seats in WA’s Upper House, the Legislative Council. Six of those seats are held by men, while the seventh is held by the sole Liberal woman, Faragher – for the next year at least.
In the Lower House, the Legislative Assembly, just three Liberal members hold seats – two women and one man.
The Legislative Assembly is gender-balanced, with 29 male members and 29 female members sitting in parliament.
Meanwhile, the Legislative Council consists of 21 male and just 14 female MLCs. WA’s next election will be held in March 2025.