predecessor parliament successor birth_name constituency_mp birth_place death_date death_place nationality birth_date term_start spouse image article_title term_end name
bill bryson australian '' seat abolished '' doris amelia hordern bourke melbourne , victoria 12 december 1970 coburg , victoria australian 18 september 1889 28 september 1946 maurice blackburn -lrb- 1914 to 1944-his death -rrb- doris blackburn.jpg doris blackburn
 10 december 1949 doris blackburn
doris blackburn

doris amelia blackburn -lrb- née hordern -rrb- -lrb- 18 september 1889 -- 12 december 1970 -rrb- was an australian political activist and member of parliament .
born in hawthorn , melbourne , victoria to lebbeus hordern , estate agent , and his wife louisa dewson -lrb- née smith -rrb- , doris hordern became involved in women 's rights and peace issues from a young age and served as the campaign secretary of vida goldstein , the first woman to stand for election to federal parliament in australia .
she married maurice blackburn , a fellow firebrand socialist , in melbourne on 10 december 1914 and spent their honeymoon organising anti-war and anti-conscription campaigns .
while her husband served at different times as a australian labor party -lrb- alp -rrb- member of the victorian and federal parliaments , blackburn continued to work on social issues , some of which brought her into conflict with the labor party -lrb- of which she too was a member -rrb- and following maurice 's expulsion from the party in 1937 , she resigned from the alp .
her husband continued to sit in parliament as an independent but lost his seat at the 1943 federal election to the official labor candidate , and died the following year .
upset at labor 's treatment of her husband , doris stood as an independent labour candidate for maurice 's old seat of bourke at the 1946 election , and by winning it she became only the second woman to be elected to the australian house of representatives .
in parliament blackburn , who shared the cross benches with fellow former labor member jack lang , championed similar issues to those of her late husband , gaining nationwide notoriety in 1947 as the only mp to vote against the atomic energy bill .
she served as the national president of the council for civil liberties .
following an electoral redistribution , her seat of bourke was abolished , and at the 1949 election she contested the newly established seat of wills .
in a contest with both the labor and liberal parties she came third with 20 percent .
standing in wills again at the 1951 election she also came third with 17 percent of the vote .
both times the seat was convincingly won by labor .
