negative as well as positive consequences. One of these was the silence imposed on Fiona Nash, who today is deputy Senate leader of the Nationals. It was Nash who observed in her second reading speech that this was "the first time that four members of different parties have co-sponsored a private senator's bill." Her three co-sponsors acknowledge her vital contribution, both in raising the issue and agreeing to "own" the bill when the government insisted that it come from the Coalition. But once it passed both houses the spark was no longer forthcoming. By that time Hill had resigned as leader of government business in the Senate and, as Allison bluntly puts it, "she was nobbled by Barnaby Joyce and Ron Boswell." I've contacted Senator Nash to discus this but so far she's maintaining her silence. The fact that a vote like the one on RU486 has yet to be repeated prompts some reflection. For how well does our parliament actually serve the citizens it's designed to represent, if women, who comprise over half the voting population, still constitute less than a third of the parliament? Admittedly, compared with how it once was, there is cause enough to celebrate. Thirty-seven years ago, in 1972, when I first voted in an Australian election, and seventy-one years after Australian women got the federal franchise, there wasn't a single woman in the House and two in the Senate. Today we have forty female MPs, twenty-seven female senators and a history-making four women cabinet