where was the first parliament held after federation
Parliament of Australia The Commonwealth of Australia came into being on 1 January 1901 with the federation of the six Australian colonies. The inaugural election took place on 29 and 30 March and the first Australian Parliament was opened on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne by Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V.[9] The only building in Melbourne that was large enough to accommodate the 14,000 guests was the western annexe of the Royal Exhibition Building. After the official opening, from 1901 to 1927, the Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne, which it borrowed from the Parliament of Victoria (which sat, instead, in the Royal Exhibition Building until 1927). (The western annexe was demolished in the 1960s.)
Women's suffrage in Australia The first woman elected to any Australian Parliament was Edith Cowan, elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly in 1921. Dame Enid Lyons, in the Australian House of Representatives and Senator Dorothy Tangney, became the first women in the federal Parliament in 1943. Lyons was in 1949 appointed Vice-President of the Executive Council by Robert Menzies. She was described as Minister without Portfolio, with no departmental duties, but the appointment gave her a seat in Cabinet. She held the position between 19 December 1949 and 7 March 1951, and is the only woman to have occupied the position.