Lee Rhiannon

Rhiannon was born Lee Brown, the daughter of Bill and Freda Brown, members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) from the 1930s, and later, the splinter, Soviet-aligned Socialist Party of Australia (SPA) from the 1970s.

From as early as the age of seven, along with her parents, she was under surveillance by the Australian counter-espionage organisation, ASIO.

Her membership of the CPA's youth league contributed to ASIO's decision.

Lee Rhiannon (formerly O'Gorman, née Brown; born 30 May 1951) is a former Australian politician who was a Senator for New South Wales between July 2011 and August 2018.

In 1968, she formed High School Students Against Vietnam War with friends.

She 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.

She joined the SPA around 1973.

In 1977, Brown married Pat O'Gorman, but they separated in the late 1980s.

During her marriage she used the surname "O'Gorman."

They had three children.

Following their separation, she adopted the surname "Rhiannon", the name of a figure from Welsh mythology.

In the 1980s she helped organise a "peace camp" protest outside the joint US-Australian defence facility at Pine Gap, in central Australia.

According to Mark Aarons, she left the SPA in the early 1980s.

From 1980 to 1982, she was a member of the Women's Advisory Council to the NSW government, and in the same period was the NSW secretary of the Union of Australian Women.

In the 1980s, she was also a journalist "for unions including the Maritime Union of Australia".

She attended the World Congress of Women in Moscow in 1987.

She 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.

She founded the Coalition for Gun Control in 1988 and AID/WATCH in 1993.

She joined the Greens in 1990.

In the 1990s, she worked at the Rainforest Information Centre, campaigning against the logging of tropical forest.

Prior to her election to the Federal Parliament, Rhiannon was a Greens NSW member of the New South Wales Legislative Council between 1999 and 2010.

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, joining fellow Green Ian Cohen in the state's upper house.

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.

Rhiannon called on the 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.

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

In November 2002, in the week prior to protests against the World Trade Organization in Sydney, Rhiannon spoke in support of the protesters and organised a public conference on Civil Disobedience at the NSW Parliament.

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

In 2007 she referred him to the parliamentary privileges committee, alleging "contempt of parliament" for comments he made in opposition to embryonic stem cell research legislation.

During her term in the NSW Parliament, she was the Greens NSW parliamentary spokesperson for the following portfolio areas:

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

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

She 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.