Annabelle Rankin

Dame Annabelle Jane Mary Rankin (28 July 190830 August 1986) was an Australian politician and diplomat. She was the first woman from Queensland elected to parliament, the first woman federal departmental minister, and the first Australian woman to be appointed head of a foreign mission.

Rankin was born in Brisbane, the daughter of state MP Colin Rankin. A member of the Liberal Party, she was elected to the Senate at the 1946 federal election, taking her seat the following year. She was the second woman elected to the Senate, after Dorothy Tangney. Rankin was the Liberal Party's chief whip from 1947 to 1950 and from 1951 to 1966; she remains the longest-serving whip in the party's history, in either chamber of parliament. In 1966, she was made Minister for Housing in the Holt government, becoming the first woman to hold a ministerial portfolio. She held that position until her retirement from politics in 1971. As High Commissioner to New Zealand from 1971 to 1974, she was the first woman to head an Australian mission overseas.

Early life

Rankin was born on 28 July 1908 in South Brisbane, Queensland. She was the older of two daughters born to Annabelle Davidson Rankin (née Thomson) and Colin Dunlop Wilson Rankin. Her father, born in Scotland, was a sugar grower and Boer War veteran who served in the Queensland Legislative Assembly (1905–1918).

Rankin grew up on her father's sugarcane farm on the Isis River near the small town of Childers. In 1919, her father replaced his deceased brother as managing director of Queensland Collieries Company, necessitating a move to Howard. Rankin attended the local state schools in Childers and Howard before completing her education as a boarder at the Glennie Memorial School in Toowoomba.

As an unmarried woman from a wealthy family, Rankin was not expected to enter the workforce. She involved herself in various community organisations, teaching Sunday school and founding a local unit of the Girl Guides. She was encouraged by her father to travel overseas, visiting China and Japan soon after leaving school. She visited Europe in 1936, working in the slums of London and with refugees from the Spanish Civil War; while in Gibraltar she witnessed the bombing of La Línea de la Concepción. She resigned from the Senate in 1971 and was made High Commissioner to New Zealand, a post she held to 1974. Following her retirement she returned to Brisbane where she continued to be involved in voluntary organisations.

Death Rankin died in Brisbane aged 78, on 30 August 1986. In 1977 Rankin was made a Life Member of the Queensland Branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia.

Legacy The Electoral Division of Rankin, which came into effect at the 1984 election, is named in her honour. The Dame Annabelle Rankin Award was inaugurated by the Queensland Branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia in her memory.