Australian Dictionary of Biography

The Hon. Dr Marlene Mary Herbert Goldsmith, no date.

© State of New South Wales through the Parliament of New South Wales.

Marlene Mary Herbert Goldsmith (1942–2000), teacher, author, and parliamentarian, was born on 29 September 1942 at Leeton, New South Wales, eldest of three children of locally born parents Cecil Vaughan Herbert, wool classer and later farmer, and his wife Esma Mary, née Williams. When Marlene was in her teens, the family moved to Gunnedah, where she attended St Mary’s College. Her descent, of five generations from ‘two illiterate immigrants’ (NSW Parliament 1988, 487), became a source of pride. Raised ‘in a home where political argument was the main course at dinner’ (Goldsmith 1996, ix), she was active in her teens in the local branch of the Country Party. Her mother taught her ‘to be domestically useless’ (WEL-Informed 1988, 8) and influenced her towards a career. She would make her political mark as a conservative feminist, explaining that her belief ‘in a fair go for everyone … makes me a feminist’ (WEL-Informed 1988, 14).

With a Commonwealth scholarship (1960), Herbert studied at the University of New England (BA, 1963; MEd Hons, 1978), where she won the university medal. She married Ian Maxwell Goldsmith, a grazier-farmer, at St Canice’s Catholic Church, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, on 21 January 1965; they would have one daughter, Georgina. Between 1967 and 1978 she taught at St Mary’s College, Gunnedah. After winning a teaching scholarship to the University of Minnesota (PhD, 1981), she completed a doctoral thesis on the cultural influences of television and held the Thurston scholarship in foundations of education (1981). Settling in Sydney, she held teaching positions at St Ursula’s College, Kingsgrove, and at the Sydney Institute of Education. ‘Determined to get involved in politics’ (WEL-Informed 1988, 11), she became principal private secretary (1982–83) to the New South Wales Liberal Opposition leader John Dowd. It was noted in the press at the time that she was the family’s breadwinner, and she expressed strong support for the role of her at-home husband.

Active in the Liberal Party of Australia thereafter, including as a member of the State executive (1984–87, 1990–91), Goldsmith was preselected for the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1988, having earlier unsuccessfully sought preselection for the Legislative Assembly seat of Burwood and for the Senate. In spite of a sweeping coalition victory at the March 1988 elections, and being second on the Liberal ticket, she was not to enter ministerial office. The long queue for ministerial office after twelve years in opposition meant that its ministers in the council between 1988 and 1995 had all entered parliament before 1988. As a close colleague, Brian Pezzutti, later said, her career probably also ‘suffered a little in terms of advancement because of her strongly held [progressive] views’ (NSW Parliament 2000, 4856–57).

Goldsmith pursued her policy concerns through the standing committee on social issues, which she chaired from 1991 to 1995 (deputy chair 1995–99, after the next change of government). Her vigorous work issued in a stream of reports dealing with matters such as access to information about adoption and to the births, marriages and death registers, youth violence, issues around medically acquired human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), sexual violence, and suicide in rural locations. She was credited with making the successful case for legislation banning female genital mutilation, and for raising the age for human depiction in pornographic material from sixteen to eighteen. As an unusually expressive member of her party, she was frequently interviewed on radio and authored numerous articles and letters to the editor. She published the polemical book Political Incorrectness in 1996; it took aim at the ‘noisy lobby groups’ that declare ‘the things we are not supposed to talk about’ as ‘taboo’ (Goldsmith 1996, xi). As she had argued in earlier research, the core problem was ‘a general dearth of overt values education in public schools’ (Goldsmith 1981, 8).

An active parliamentarian and external office-holder, Goldsmith was parliamentary representative on the councils of both Macquarie and Western Sydney universities, chair of the premier’s advisory committee on violence in 1991, and a member of the violence prevention awards board (1992–95). She was also active in voluntary and activist positions, notably the Catholic Education Task Force on Girls’ Careers and Education, the Parents as Teachers program, and the Reclaim the Night movement. Though hardly a sporting type, she consistently encouraged the equality of women in sport and was patron of DanceSport New South Wales, noting that ballroom dancing was ‘as athletic as football and as competitive as politics’ (Glebe and Western Weekly 1991).

In 1998 Goldsmith became the part-time executive director of the Canberra-based Menzies Research Centre Ltd. An attempt at Senate preselection that year was unsuccessful, albeit narrowly, and possibly not helped by unsolicited support from the radio commentator Alan Jones. Illness forced her retirement from the Legislative Council at the election of March 1999. She died of kidney cancer on 13 April 2000 at Longueville and was cremated following a requiem mass at St Canice’s; her husband and their daughter survived her. She was remembered by her council colleague John Ryan as one who ‘had a fine mind and … loved using it’ (NSW Parliament 2000, 4836).