Lee's Biography

 

In June 2009, Lee won preselection to run as the lead candidate on The Greens NSW ticket for the Senate at the 2010 Federal election. Lee committed to resigning from the Legislative Council when that federal election is called and she did so on 19 July 2010. 

 

Lee holds a strong personal belief that social change and environment protection come from people’s movements, not politicians. In her inaugural speech to NSW Parliament she said, “This Parliament makes the law, but it is the people who make history".  

 

Lee has three adult children and lives with her partner in Sydney. 

 

Lee is the daughter of Freda Yetta Brown, a prominent Australian women's rights activist, and Bill Brown, who were both Communist Party of Australia (CPA) members, deeply committed to social justice and equal rights. She went to primary schools in Newtown, Kangaroo Valley and Bronte. She lived on a dairy farm in Kangaroo Valley. She attended Sydney Girls High School, completing her Higher School Certificate in1969. In her final school year she was elected Vice Captain. 

 

Whilst still at school Lee was active against the war in Vietnam as a member of High School Students Against Vietnam War (1968), travelling to Canberra to protest at the US Embassy and Australian Parliament. 

 

As a teenager in the late 1960s, Lee worked as a zookeeper at Taronga Zoo and then at the Regent Park Zoo in London. She later graduated from the University of New South Wales with a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in botany and zoology with Honours in Botany (1975). She was a UNSW tutor for botany practicals (1975) and worked at Macquarie University as a research assistant in population ecology (1976-77) and a tutor in general ecology. 

 

In the 1970s, Lee was arrested for her involvement in anti-apartheid protests.  During the 1980s, Lee was a member of NSW Women’s Advisory Council to the Wran State Government (1980-82) and an organiser of the Pine Gap peace camp, where 700 women camped outside the US military base in central Australia. During this decade she was Secretary of the Union of Australian Women (NSW Branch) (1980-83) and an organiser for Women Against Global Violence and Women for Survival (1983-85). Lee also worked as a journalist for trade unions including the Seamen’s Union (now MUA) and the printing union (now AMWU). 

 

She founded and became convenor of the National Coalition for Gun Control (1988-92), regularly debating gun lobbyists in the media and championing the call for all guns out of urban areas. 

 

In the 1990s, Lee’s attention moved towards overseas aid. In this period, she was public relations officer with the Ideas Centre, a resource centre on low income countries (1989-90). She initiated 'Pactok', a program designed to provide people from low-income countries with information technologies (1990-91) and AWARE (Action for the World and Renewable Environment), a schools and community education program highlighting inequity between the first and third worlds (1990). 

 

Lee worked for the Rainforest Information Centre (1991-1992) where she helped develop a campaign for the banning of imports of rainforest timbers. One of Lee’s most significant achievements was founding AID/WATCH, an international monitoring body of Australia’s overseas aid programs (Director, 1993-98).

 

During her time as a Greens MLC in NSW Parliament, Lee campaigned on a broad range of issues. These included reforming the funding of public education, advocating for more sustainable public transport and no new motorways, protecting workers’ rights, opposing over-development, creating a fairer justice system, protecting native forests, working for equality for gay, lesbian and transgender people, promoting animal rights, and cleaning up politicians’ pay and entitlements. She also campaigned for reform of NSW’s freedom of information laws and to remove abortion from the NSW Crimes Act. 

 

In 2001, Lee initiated the annual Juanita Nielsen Memorial Lecture to honour the  memory and achievements of the community activist, who was murdered in the 1970s for her stand against overdevelopment in Kings Cross. 

 

Two of Lee’s most notable campaigns have been in the areas of political donations and coal mining. 

 

Lee initiated the Greens www.democracy4sale.org project that exposes how donations distort democracy and helped to drive electoral funding reform in NSW. 

Lee initiated a private member’s bill to ban donations from developers to the NSW government in 2003 and worked with Greens MP Sylvia Hale to move the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Restoration of Community Participation) Bill in 2008.

 

Although these bills were defeated, the government was under pressure to clean up donations. In June 2008 the NSW government presented two bills, the Election Funding Amendment (Political Donations Expenditure) Bill 2008 and the Local Government and Planning Legislation Amendment (Political Donations) Bill 2008. Lee moved a raft of amendments to close loopholes, which the major parties’ failed to support. Donations from developers to political parties in NSW were finally banned in 2009.

 

Working closely with communities affected by coal mining, Lee campaigned against the expansion of the NSW coal industry, highlighting damage to the natural environment and water sources, prime agricultural land and the quality of life of local people, including their health. In 2009, she moved a private member’s bill to safeguard prime agricultural land from mining. It was defeated by one vote.

 

Lee campaigned for better funding of NSW public schools. She introduced private member’s bills to reduce the financial assistance given to wealthy non-government schools and make education funding for public schools and TAFE more equitable. 

 

Lee worked closely with the union movement when the Carr government moved in 2001 to dismantle the hard-won right to workers’ compensation. Her ‘no job is worth dying for’ campaign called for the introduction of industrial manslaughter legislation.  

 

Lee worked for a better funded train network, reinstating rural branch lines and CountryLink services, first class infrastructure for bikes and pedestrians, a robust light rail system for inner Sydney, and an end to new motorways. She also campaigned to keep Sydney Ferries in public hands. Lee helped expose the problems with the Cross City Tunnel Project. Her Peak Oil Response Plan Bill set out how the NSW government should plan for peak oil.

 

Community pressure and Lee’s Save Callan Park Bill 2002 helped the successful campaign to save Callan Park from development. 

 

Lee campaigned against the major parties’ populist law and order agenda, including extending police powers, creating new offences and longer sentences and eroding civil liberties.  She opposed the use of sniffer dogs, which encourage discriminatory policing and wasting resources, and the weakening of NSW’s gun control laws.

 

Lee campaigned to lower the age of consent to 16 years for gay males.  She introduced bills to prevent discrimination by private schools and small businesses. She also campaigned to allow adoption by same sex couples. 

 

High-profile campaigns have included opposing the import of Asian elephants to Australian zoos, exposing cruel practices at NSW's piggeries, and preventing moves to open up NSW state forests and national parks to hunting. 

 

Lee called for reform and increased transparency of the overly generous pay, entitlements and superannuation scheme for NSW MPs . 

 

Lee served on a number of parliamentary committees, including: 

General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2

General Purpose Standing Committee No. 3

Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters

Member, Select Committee on the NSW Taxi Industry 

 

Read Lee's full environmental biography and the work she's done campaigning for the environment.