Stott Despoja, Natasha

Stott Despoja, Natasha
▪ 1997

      Though young members of Parliament were rare in Australia and young women members were even rarer, in 1996 Natasha Stott Despoja became the youngest woman ever elected to sit in the Senate. The 27-year-old Democrat, who represented South Australia, served as a role model and torchbearer for a generation that usually lacked political representation.

      She entered Parliament by filling a vacancy in November 1995 and was elected to office in her own right on March 2, 1996, to a term due to expire in June 2002. Her party responsibilities were to oversee employment and training, higher education, youth affairs, immigration and multicultural affairs, and science and technology. This daunting task reflected the party's small size rather than her experience, which had been limited to working as a shop assistant, student association president, and a researcher for Australian Democrat party leaders.

      Stott Despoja aimed to change not only the average age in Parliament (which was nearly 50) but its gender. "It's a men's club," she quipped. "I always joke about the fact that the Parliament House flagpole is the largest in the southern hemisphere, so size does matter in Parliament."

      A proud representative of Generation X, Stott Despoja sported Doc Marten shoes and bemoaned the fact that the chief preoccupation of the press was her footwear—not her ideas. By the end of her term in office, she wanted to see more of her generation involved in politics. Indeed, following her appointment, membership in her party rose sharply in the 18-24 age group. "We want a new generation of Democrats and Democrat politicians," said Stott Despoja, but she was also prepared to face difficulties in persuading the young and disillusioned to take an interest in the political process.

      Stott Despoja was born on Sept. 9, 1969, in Adelaide, S.Aus. She attended Canberra Boys Grammar School in a failed coeducational experiment and graduated (1991) with a B.A. degree from the University of Adelaide, where she majored in politics and history. Her mother, a former literary editor, was Stott Despoja's enduring role model, and she gave her daughter insight into the many problems that single mothers had in the Australian community. (A.R.G. GRIFFITHS)

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Universalium. 2010.

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