People Australia

Vi Jordan, 1977

Ipswich Libraries, 8098

Ellen Violet (Vi) Jordan, née Perrett (1913-1982) teacher, musician and parliamentarian

Birth: 29 June 1913 at Ipswich, Queensland, daughter of James Bertie Perrett (1890-1975), a fitter at Ipswich Railway Workshops, born at Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire, England and Queensland-born Ann Jane, née Brown (1896-1979). Marriage: 14 June 1932 at St Thomas’s Anglican Church, North Ipswich, to David Jordan (1905-1967), a railway porter of Scottish descent, born at Ipswich. They had one son. Death: 7 May 1982 at Ipswich, Qld. Religion: Anglican. 

• Educated at Brassall State School and Ipswich Girls Grammar School, later worked as a school teacher.
• Entertained many links with Ipswich community affairs, among many distinctions being alderman of Ipswich City Council 1961-1967 and first woman delegate to Queensland Local Government Conference.
• A member of the Australian Labor Party from the late 1940s, she was president of the Queensland ALP’s Central Women's Committee from 1956 to 1967; secretary of Ipswich branch of the ALP.
• She was the first woman to win ALP preselection in Queensland. Elected to the Legislative Assembly as member for Ipswich West on 28 May 1966, she became the first Labor woman and second woman to be elected to the Queensland parliament. She held the seat until she was defeated on 7 December 1974.
• Author of 'Our women Legislators, where are they?' in Bessie M. Rischbieth, (ed), March of Australian Women, (1964), p.77.
• Cause of death: myocardial infarction.
• In 2017 the new electorate of Jordan in the Queensland Legislative Assembly was named for her.

Sources
D. B. Waterson and John Arnold, A biographical register of the Queensland parliament, 1930-80 (Canberra, 1982).