Margaret Reynolds

Australian politician

Margaret Reynolds (; born 19 July 1941) served as an Australian Labor Party Senator for Queensland from 1983 to 1999. Reynolds had two ministerial appointments during her time in the Senate, serving as Minister for Local Government from September 1987 to April 1990 and as Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women from January 1988 to April 1990. She retired from federal politics in 1999, and went on to lecture in politics and international relations at the University of Queensland. In 1995, Reynolds published a book titled The Last Bastion: Labor women working towards equality in the parliaments of Australia, which is a compilation of biographical details about ALP women from the Party's inception till the year it was published. A further book, Living Politics, was published by University of Queensland Press in 2007.

Reynolds was born on 19 July 1941 in Hobart, Tasmania. She was the only child of Jess (née Montgomery) and Walter Rodis "Rod" Lyne. Her father was a farm labourer and soldier who served in New Guinea during World War II. He died in 1947, after which she and her mother relocated to Launceston to be closer to her maternal grandparents. Both her mother and maternal grandmother were schoolteachers. Reynolds attended Trevallyn Primary School and Launceston State High School, matriculating in 1957. She subsequently studied teaching for two years at the University of Tasmania. Her first teaching post was at the small rural locality of Natone in the state's north west. She subsequently undertook further training in special education and taught at schools in Launceston, Devonport, and the Derwent Valley. Reynolds and her husband moved to England in 1964 and spent a year teaching at schools in London's East End. They returned to Australia in mid 1965 and settled in Townsville, Queensland, where her husband became a lecturer at Townsville University College. In Townsville, Reynolds taught for periods at Cootharinga, a special needs school, and at Aitkenvale State School. She completed a diploma in education at James Cook University in 1977 and was appointed as a tutor in language and literature at the local College of Advanced Education. She subsequently completed the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the University of Queensland in 1982.