Anne Henderson: ‘Given the Opportunity, She Took It’, The Remarkable Career of Margaret Guilfoyle

This week on the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer speaks to Anne Henderson about Liberal trailblazer, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle.

Anne is Deputy Director of the Sydney Institute and the author of many books including on Margaret Guilfoyle, Enid Lyons, Joseph Lyons, Mary Mackillop, Patrick Glynn and more. In 2014 she published Menzies at War, a detailed account of Menzies’s years in the political wilderness between his two stints as prime minister, which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for History.

Guilefoyle was a highly respected politician, who followed in a long tradition of active female involvement on the Liberal side of politics. A Senator for Victoria from 1971 to 1987, she rose to become Minister for Social Security and then Minister for Finance in the Fraser Coalition Government. Guilfoyle had the distinction of being the first woman to hold a cabinet-level ministerial portfolio in Australia, and also being the first woman to hold a major economic portfolio.