O'Neil, Pamela Frances (1945 - )

Pamela O'Neil was Australia's first Sex Discrimination Commissioner.

The youngest of six children, Pamela O'Neil was born in Brisbane and attended All Hallows School, Brisbane. Between 1963 and 1965 she attended Queensland University where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in physiology and biochemistry. She worked for a short time as a scientist at the Royal Brisbane Hospital before moving to the Northern Territory following her marriage in 1966.

Prior to her election to the Legislative Assembly O'Neil worked part-time for the Red Cross Blood Bank. Between 1966 and 1969, before the birth of her child, she was employed as a Biochemist with the Commonwealth Health Laboratory in Darwin.

O'Neil was the Australian Labor Party Member for Fannie Bay of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 1977 to 1983. She was deputy leader of the opposition from 1981-1983.

In 1984, after 18 years in Darwin, O'Neil and her family moved to Canberra upon her appointment as the first Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Commisioner. She attracted national attention when she insisted that she would be addressed as Ms! [1]

O'Neil resigned in 1988 and was appointed Director of the Australian Heritage Commission in 1989. At the end of that year she was invited to become the inaugural Principal Member of the newly created Immigration Review Tribunal. After six years in this position O'Neil resigned and has since held part-time appointments on a variety of tribunals.

Pamela O'Neil is a member of the National Gallery, the ACT Museum and Art Gallery and the Canberra Ornithologists Group. Her interests include food, wine, travel, music, art and sport.

[1] http://www.nwmc.org.au/history2/biogs/oneil.htm

Events

20 Sept. 1945	Born: daughter of John Patrick and Lurline Margaret Patfield Caffery
1958 - 1962	Attended All Hallows' School, Queensland
1963 - 1965	Attended Queensland University
1966 - 1969	Biochemist with the Commonwealth Health Laboratory, Darwin
20 May 1966	Married: Allan O'Neil, they were to have 2 sons
1977 - 1983	Member Legislative Assembly, Australian Labor Party, for Fannie Bay, Northern Territory
1981 - 1983	Deputy Opposition Leader, Northern Territory
c. 1983	Appointed, Northern Territory representative to the CSIRO Committee on Information and Social Impact
1984 - 1988	Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Commissioner
1986 - 1988	Member of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
1989	Director of the Australian Heritage Commission
1989 - 1995	Principal Member of the Immigration Review Tribunal
1991 - 1993	Member of the Executive Committee, Australian Institute Administrative Law
1992	Member of the Committee for the Review of the System of Review of Migration Decisions
1992 - 1993	President of the Royal Institute of Public Administration, ACT Division
1996 - 1997	Head of the Commonwealth Paedophile Inquiry
1996 - 1998	Chairperson of the Migration Agents Licensing Board
1996 - 1999	Member of the National Native Title Tribunal
1996 - 2001	Senior Member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, ACT
1998	Visiting Scholar of the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University

See also

• Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, 'Where are the Women in Australian science?', 22 August 2003, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/wisa/wisa.html. [ Details... ]
• Herd, Margaret (ed.), Who's who in Australia 2002, 38 edn, Crown Content, Melbourne, 2002, 2020 pp. [ Details... ]