A year after Australia became a nation the men's club that formed its Parliament announced that women would henceforth be eligible to vote and stand for election.

Four decades later Dame Enid Lyons, the wife of a former Prime Minister, became the first woman elected to the Parliament.

Over the next seven decades women seized the opportunity to participate in the nation's legislatures and law, providing convincing proof of equality between women's and men's abilities to govern.

Now fully qualified in their own right in balance with men, the time has come for the provision of women's and men's legislatures presided over by an executive of elders accompanied by courts of women's and men's jurisdiction.

Further delay will turn benevolence into perpetual hindrance.

27 March, 2008