Machin worked for the Young National Party as a field organiser, serving on its State Executive, and as Communications Officer for the National Party of Australia from 1981–82. In 1983 she was elected to North Sydney Municipal Council an independent alderman at age 25, serving until 1985 when she contested a by-election for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Gloucester on 12 October. Winning the safe National Party seat, she became the first woman to represent the National Party in the Legislative Assembly. She founded her company Machin Consulting in the same year. Her original seat of Gloucester was abolished before the 1988 state election, so she stood for the newly recreated seat of Manning which covered the a portion of the same area. Manning was subsequently abolished after one term. The bulk of its territory was merged into Port Macquarie at the 1991 state election, and Machin successfully transferred there. Machin was Deputy Speaker and became the first woman to chair the New South Wales Parliament. She appointed Minister for Consumer Affairs in the coalition government of John Fahey on 26 May 1993. The election of the CarrLabor government in 1995 saw the coalition in opposition. Machin was appointed shadow minister for Consumer Affairs, Roads and Fisheries until she resigned from Parliament on 28 August 1996 after the birth of her second child. Her resignation prompted the 1996 Port Macquarie by election, won by then National Party memberRob Oakeshott.
Post-parliamentary career
Machin became the President of Save the Children Fund NSW in 1996, remaining in that position until 2000, as well as serving on the National Council for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. Between 1997 and 2000 Machin was the Deputy Chair of the Australian Republican Movement. She was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in February 1998, elected by a voluntary ballot run by the Australian Electoral Commission In 2005, Machin was elected to the board of the NRMA to represent the Coghlan region, which stretches from the Hunter River to the Queensland border. Following her re-election to the NRMA board on 8 December 2008, Machin became President on 10 December until November 2014.
Private life
Wendy Machin married David Bell, the former chief executive of the Australian Bankers' Association, a former senior executive at Westpac, the CEO of the Actuaries Institute and who is now the MD of CT Australasia, on 20 July 1991 and they have 3 children; James, Georgia and Emma. Her only sibling, Janne, was left profoundly disabled after a difficult birth.
