Williamstown Literary Festival

Joan Kirner, AM, BA, Dip Ed, FACE

Joan graduated from the University of Melbourne and began her teaching career in Ballarat in the late 1950s. She married Ron Kirner in 1960 and it was the education of their children that started Joan on her political career. Horrified when her elder son started school in a class of thirty-four children and determined to improve conditions in schools for children, teachers and parents, she lobbied politicians through various parent organisations.

In 1975, Joan was the first woman to be elected as President of the Australian Council of State School Organisations. She entered the Victorian Parliament in 1982 as an MLC (ALP) for the Province of Melbourne West. Between 1985 and 1988 she was Minister for Conservation, Forests & Lands. In 1988 she moved to the Lower House as the member for Williamstown and was appointed Minister for Education (1988-1990) and Minister for Ethnic Affairs (1990-1991). She served as Deputy Premier from 1989-1990 and in 1990 was elected the first woman Premier for the State of Victoria. She held the position for two years.

After a short period as Leader of the Opposition and shadow Minister for Women’s Affairs and Ethnic Affairs, Joan resigned from Parliament in 1994. That same year, she was appointed Chair of the Employment Services Regulatory Authority (which position she held until 1996), and Chair of the National Committee to Celebrate the Centenary of Federation. In May 2001, as a member of the Victorian Committee for the Centenary of Federation, she organised the Women Shaping the Nation event and presentation of the Victorian Honour Roll of women in the Victorian Parliament.

A wide variety of community bodies absorbed her time, including the Salvation Army’s Crossroads, and the boards of the Playbox Theatre, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, the Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust, the Women’s Circus (which appointed her its Patron in 1995), the Living Museum of the West, Positive Women, and the Evatt Foundation. In 1996 she co-founded Emily’s List (a financial, political and personal support network for progressive Labor women candidates) in 1996. In its first five years, Emily’s List helped sixty-eight women to be elected to parliaments around Australia.

Joan Kirner continues to give much of her personal time as a mentor for women in a variety of spheres, particularly politics, and published The Women’s Power Handbook, with her biographer, Moira Rayner, in 1999. She was the Founding Patron and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Williamstown Literary Festival since its beginnings.