Woman M.L.A.

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 28 July 1928, Page 10

Woman M.L.A.

Only One i)i Australia

CONSTITUENTS ARE 3,000 TIMBER-WORKERS

“Ive travelled on the cowcatcher for 16 miles when the need has arisen." Australia's only woman member of a State Legislative Assembly, Miss May Holman, of West Australia, smiles her wide, generous smile as she tells of how she visits the 31 centres of her constituency y (Forrest), which she. has represented for the past three years. “The cow-catcher,” she goes on in her story to the Melbourne “Herald,” “isn’t bad as a novelty means of travelling. They put bags over it. But it gets pretty, hoj, and I expect I shouldn't be as cheerful about it if I had to travel that way often, like the wives and children of some of my Forrest timber-getters.

“Quite 97 per cent, of my 3,000 constituents are in'the timber industry, and I have to cover country that is all hills and valleys, and sometimes cannot be got at except by travelling on the log takes —kind of trucks without sides, and supplied with bolsters and chocks for keeping the logs In place. “I’ve aften travelled on them. I’ve had a sleep on the meat shelf,” she adds, with that jolly smile growing wider and her brown eyes gay at the memory, “and i’.ve had the bread-box for a seat. I’ve travelled on the engine and among the wood in the tender, and I’ve sat oil the runner —a sort of empty truck with the logs on the sets behind, and the feeling if the train stopped suddenly, a log or two might come boring through my back!" In spite of the difficulties of visiting her electors Miss Holman spends most of her year among them. Last year only ten of her week-ends were spent, out of the constituency, which looks to her not only for such serious affairs as the drafting of the Timber Industry Regulation Bill, but is just as likely to invite her to have an analysis made of a bag of oats or to buy jazz-caps for a Queen of Labour. The Timber Industry Regulation Bill, which was passed in 1926, but has been In operation only since January, when three mill inspectors were appointed, is her principal achievement, and has attracted the notice of America, whence she has lately received requests (from Carleton College, Minnesota, and the American Federation of Labour) for copies of her two and a-half hours’ speech on it, the longest Miss Holman has made. “Are you nervous in speaking?” she is asked.

“I was terrified at first, because I had never made a speech in my life until I stood for Parliament. ■ Oh, yes, I am fairly fluent now, though I’m not an Impressive speaker. You see, I can’t bear affectation of any kind, and so I just speak the same as I’m talking to you now.” That, you think, must be attractive, for Forrest’s represenative lias a soft voice with a little bit of a lilt in it, the gift probably of her Irish mother. Her Cornish father, who died over three years ago, was member for Forrest, and secretary to the Timber Workers’ Union. May had been his confidential clerk, for 14 years, so that wlie’n Forrest’s affairs came under her wing, she knew exactly its greatest needs.

“Father had always advocated a Timber Industry Regulation Bill,” she explains, “but he had never Government that would put it through for him. I was lucky In having a Labour Government behind me. The main feature of the Bill is the provision for the protection of machinery to minimise accidents, which used to be very high among timber-mill employees. The Factory Act in West Australia did not include timber mills. I belidve there is no other Act in the World that deals like ours with timber alone.” Another wish of her father’s has been realised by Miss Holman in the securing of a school on wheels for Jarralidale Landing. “You see, as soon as the timber has been cut out in -one spot, the men and their families move on,” she • says, “and father thought that a converted railway carriage would be just the thing as a school. He had actually managed to get one for Jarrahdale, but in the confusion following his death, It was given to another,district. We’ve got one now, though, about 12ft x 70ft, which serves the purpose splendidly.