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. She was 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. Early life and political activism 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. In 1968, with friends she formed High School Students Against Vietnam War. 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 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. 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. 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. She attended the World Congress of Women in Moscow in 1987. In the 1980s, she was also a journalist "for unions including the Maritime Union of Australia". 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. 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