Lee Rhiannon

Lee Rhiannon
Senator-elect for New South Wales
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 July 2011
Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council
In office 27 March 1999 – 19 July 2010
Personal details
Born	(1951-05-30) 30 May 1951
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Greens
Website	LeeRhiannon.org.au

Lee Rhiannon (née Lee Brown) (born 30 May 1951) is an Australian politician and member of the Australian Greens. A former member of the Socialist Party, Rhiannon joined the Greens in 1990. She was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council at the 1999 state election, and re-elected at the 2007 state election. She was elected as a Greens Senator for New South Wales at the 2010 federal election.

Early life

Rhiannon was born Lee Brown, the daughter of Bill and Freda Brown, who were both lifelong members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). She sat the New South Wales Higher School Certificate at Sydney Girls High School in 1969 and obtained a Bachelor of Science, majoring in botany and zoology, with honours in botany at the University of New South Wales, graduating 1975. Her parents' membership of the CPA led to documentation of Brown's life by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) from as early as the age of seven.. Lee Brown joined the CPA as a teenager. Although Rhiannon has said that her parents became disillusioned with Moscow following the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia., in 1971 all three Browns resigned from the CPA as a result of its opposition to Soviet policy. They joined the Socialist Party of Australia, a pro-Moscow party which explicitly defended the invasion of Czechoslovakia. (Following the dissolution of the old CPA, the SPA adopted the name Communist Party of Australia). Rhiannon (then using her married surname of O'Gorman) was editor of the SPA magazine Survey until the late 1980s.

During the 1970s Rhiannon was arrested during anti-apartheid protests. In the 1980s she helped organise the "peace camp" protest outside the joint US-Australian defence facility at Pine Gap, central Australia. Rhiannon joined the Greens New South Wales in 1990. In 2010, she told The Weekend Australian that she was "not a communist" and that "Greens members condemn the crimes committed under Stalin".

Lee Brown married Paddy O'Gorman with whom she had three children. Following their separation in 1987, she adopted the surname "Rhiannon", which is the name of a figure from Welsh mythology.

The Former Members Index website of the NSW Parliament lists Rhiannon's former occupations as: zoo keeper, freelance journalist, lecturer in environment and development issues, social justice and environment campaigner and as Director of AID/WATCH.

Other poltical and community engagement

• High School Students Against Vietnam War 1968
• Organiser with Low Cost Housing for Glebe Estate from 1971-1976
• Secretary, Waverley International Year of the Child Committee 1978-1980
• Organiser for Bondi Junction Residents Action Group from 1974-1978
• Member of Women's Advisory Council to the NSW Government, 1980-82
• Secretary, Union of Australian Women (NSW Branch), 1980-83
• Organiser for Women Against Global Violence and Women for Survival, 1983-85
• Member of the Woollahra P&C, 1984-89
• Organiser for Parents Support Public Education, 1998
• Convenor, Coalition for Gun Control 1988-92
• Director, Rainforest Information Centre, 1990-1992
• Director, AID/WATCH 1993-98

Memberships

Former

• Australian Journalists Association, 1984 - 1991

Current

• Eastern Suburbs Leagues Club
• Jessie Street National Women's Library
• Australia Anti Bases Campaign Coalition
• Workers Radio Sydney
• Ku-ring-gai Bat Conservation Society
• Vegan Society
• Aid/Watch
• STEP Inc
• Public Service Association. Has three children.

Parliamentary career

New South Wales

Lee Rhiannon at a press briefing in 2007

Rhiannon contested the New South Wales Legislative Council at the 1999 state election for the Australian Greens. She was elected with three percent of the statewide vote (more than 100,000 votes), joining fellow Green Ian Cohen in the state's upper house of parliament. She was re-elected with over nine percent of the vote (more than 300,000 votes) at the 2007 state election, taking her seat with three other Greens MLCs.

Rhiannon used her New South Wales Parliamentary maiden speech in 1999 to announce her opposition to a development proposal by the Carr Labor Government for Walsh Bay, Sydney. Rhiannon called on the Australian Labor Party to advance instead the Party's constitutional ideals for "redistribution of political and economic power" and "the development of public enterprises based upon... forms of social ownership". Rhiannon also spoke against Australia's British Colonial Legacy and announced that she was the first MLC to sit in the NSW Parliament without the title "honourable". She spoke of her family's involvement in the labour movement and acknowledged her parents' membership of the Communist Party of Australia and said she was proud of their tradition of "optimistic social activism". She reiterated Greens opposition to privatisation of public assets and to the Howard Government's Goods and Services Tax.

Rhiannon served on the following Committees in state parliament: General Purpose Standing Committees, Joint Select Committees on the Cross City Tunnel, a Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, a Standing Committee on Law and Justice, a Select Committee on the NSW Taxi Industry, a Select Committee on the Increase in Prisoner Population, and a Committee on the Office of the Ombudsman and Police Integrity Commission.

In November 2002, in the week prior to protests against the World Trade Organisation in Sydney, Rhiannon spoke in support of the protesters and organised a public conference on Civil Disobedience at NSW Parliament. Rhiannon spoke against police actions during the S11 Protests, which violently protested against meetings of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in 2000. Rhiannon called on Police Minister Michael Costa to guarantee that police violence would not be used against protesters in Sydney. Costa in return called on Rhiannon to resign for hosting the civil disobedience seminar. Rhiannon was critical of Michael Costa's policies in his subsequent term as Labor's treasurer, and described him in 2005 as a "liability". Rhiannon lobbied the Vatican against considering Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell for the position of Pope because of his conservative views and in 2007, referred him to the to the parliamentary privileges committee, alleging "contempt of parliament" after he expressed opposition to embryonic stem cell research.

Federal parliament

Rhiannon contested and won a seat in the Australian Senate for New South Wales at the 2010 federal election for the Australian Greens. She resigned from the New South Wales Legislative Council when the federal election was called, with a ballot of party members selecting Cate Faehrmann to fill the casual vacancy.

Rhiannon was elected with 10.7 percent of the statewide vote (more than 400,000 votes), a swing to the Greens in New South Wales of 2.3 percent since the previous federal election. She will share the balance of power with eight other Greens Senators from July 2011.

At the NSW Greens State Conference prior to the 2011 NSW State Election Rhiannon successfully promoted the adoption of a policy to prevent trade between Australia and Israel, and stop Israeli sportspeople and performers coming to Australia, saying that her policy was "motivated by the universal principles of freedom, justice and equal rights". Following the election, Federal leader Bob Brown said that he had conveyed his disapproval of this policy emphasis to Rhiannon.

As a senator-elect, Rhiannon toured the Hunter Region of New South Wales to build a campaign to halt open cut and coal seam gas expansion in the area.

External links

• NSW Greens Homepage
• Australian Greens Homepage
• Text of Maiden Speech by Rhiannon to NSW Parliament
• LeeRhiannon.org.au - official website