29 Facts About Lee Rhiannon

Lee Rhiannon is a former Australian politician who was a Senator for New South Wales between July 2011 and August 2018.

Lee Rhiannon was elected at the 2010 federal election, representing the Australian Greens.

Lee Rhiannon completed secondary studies at Sydney Girls High School in 1969 and graduated in 1975 as a Bachelor of Science, majoring in botany and zoology with honours in botany, at the University of New South Wales.

Lee Rhiannon edited the magazine Survey: A Monthly Digest of Trends in the Soviet Union and Other Socialist Countries from 1988 until it ceased publication in 1990; this aspect of her past came under scrutiny when she ran for the Senate.

Lee Rhiannon attended the World Congress of Women in Moscow in 1987.

Lee Rhiannon contested the New South Wales Legislative Council at the 1999 state election for the Australian Greens.

Lee Rhiannon was elected with three percent of the statewide vote, joining fellow Green Ian Cohen in the state's upper house.

Lee Rhiannon was re-elected with over nine percent of the vote at the 2007 state election, taking her seat with three other Greens MLCs.

Lee Rhiannon used her New South Wales maiden parliamentary speech in 1999 to announce her opposition to a development proposal by the Carr Labor government for Walsh Bay.

Lee Rhiannon 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".

Lee Rhiannon 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".

Lee Rhiannon reiterated Greens opposition to privatisation of public assets and to the Howard government's Goods and Services Tax.

Lee 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 Organization in Sydney, Lee Rhiannon spoke in support of the protesters and organised a public conference on Civil Disobedience at the NSW Parliament.

Lee Rhiannon spoke against police actions during the S11 Protests, which violently protested against meetings of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in 2000.

Lee 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 Lee Rhiannon to resign for hosting the civil disobedience seminar.

Lee Rhiannon lobbied the Vatican against considering the Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, for the position of Pope because of his conservative views.

Lee Rhiannon contested and won a seat in the Australian Senate for New South Wales at the August 2010 federal election for the Australian Greens.

Lee Rhiannon resigned from the NSW Legislative Council when the federal election was called, with a ballot of party members selecting Cate Faehrmann to fill the casual vacancy.

Lee Rhiannon was elected with 10.7 percent of the statewide vote.

In support of the statement, Lee Rhiannon said that the BDS campaign was "motivated by the universal principles of freedom, justice and equal rights".

Lee Rhiannon took up her seat in the Australian Senate on 1 July 2011 and in August 2011 it was reported that Lee Rhiannon had refused to back away from the BDS campaign.

In June 2017 Lee Rhiannon was suspended from the Federal Greens party room following an internal dispute over her opposition to the Federal Greens' support for the Turnbull government education funding changes.

Lee Rhiannon subsequently lost the first position on the Greens NSW Senate ticket for the 2019 Australian federal election to NSW Greens MLC Mehreen Faruqi.

On 25 May 2018, Lee Rhiannon announced she would resign as a senator in mid-August, with Faruqi to be nominated to fill the resulting casual vacancy.

Lee Rhiannon gave her valedictory speech in the Senate on 13 August 2018, warning the Greens to "resist careerism, hierarchical control, bullying behaviour and associated leaking and backgrounding".

Lee Rhiannon formally resigned her Senate position on 15 August 2018.

In 2018, Lee Rhiannon was elected as a committee member of the SEARCH Foundation, the legal successor of the old CPA.