Lee Rhiannon
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Senator Lee Rhiannon |
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| Senator for New South Wales | |
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Assumed office 1 July 2011 |
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| Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council | |
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In office 27 March 1999 – 19 July 2010 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
Lee Brown 30 May 1951 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Political party | Australian Greens |
| Website | lee-rhiannon.greensmps.org.au |
Lee Rhiannon (born 30 May 1951) is an Australian politician who has been a Senator for New South Wales since being elected at the 2010 federal election, representing the Australian Greens. 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, a child of Marxist parents, had formerly been a member of the Socialist Party of Australia (since 1996, the Communist Party of Australia).
Lee Rhiannon was born Lee Brown, the daughter of Bill and Freda Brown, who were long-term members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and later the Soviet-loyal Socialist Party of Australia (SPA). Her parents' membership of the CPA and Lee's membership of the CPA's youth league led to documentation of her life by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) from as early as the age of seven. She joined the SPA around 1973.
She sat the New South Wales Higher School Certificate 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. In 1977, she studied Marxism at the International Lenin School in Moscow.
During the 1970s Rhiannon was arrested during anti-apartheid protests. 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, but she remained active in party-sponsored activities until the late 1980s. She edited the SPA's official newspaper, Survey, from 1988 until it ceased publication in 1990, authoring pro-Soviet articles. This aspect of her past came under scrutiny when she ran for the Senate. She joined the Greens in 1990.
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