Lee Rhiannon to contest Senate

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Being a Greens member, I’m gonna refrain from commenting on this story, so I’ll just quote from this AAP story:

Greens MP Lee Rhiannon has told her party she will stand down from the NSW upper house ahead of the next federal election in a bid for a Senate spot.

Ms Rhiannon won her seat in the legislative council at the 1999 state election and has led a number of campaigns, most recently calling for political donation reform.

Her current term in the NSW upper house doesn’t expire until 2015.

“When our party opens up preselection (for the Senate) I will put forward my name, but that hasn’t been finalised,” Ms Rhiannon told AAP on Thursday.

“Irrespective of that, so that the party has certainty, I’ve said that I will resign when a federal election will be called.

The Greens will be choosing their 2010 Senate team in the first half of 2009. Clearly it will be interesting to see a new Greens MLC elected to fill the remainder of Lee’s term when she steps down at the time of the next federal election.

Update: the Sydney Morning Herald has injected the story with some baseless speculation about Lee replacing Bob Brown as the Greens leader, clearly written by someone who doesn’t know much about the internal dynamics of the Australian Greens, although a potential Senator Rhiannon would immediately overtake Senators Siewert, Ludlam and Hanson-Young in terms of parliamentary experience.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting development. The Greens need to win Senate seats in the eastern states. Rhiannon is a tough politician and campaigner. Good Luck to her. Would Kerrie Tucker go into state politics?

  2. I don’t want to say something that violates people’s privacy, but Kerry Nettle has gone on to do other things and I think it will be unlikely she’ll run in 2010. She may sometime in the future, who knows, but she hasn’t been active with the Greens NSW since her term finished.

  3. Ben , you are a true gentleman and a scholar! I am a Greens member too , but it is nice to know a few facts!

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