Background
Wright was born in 1961 at Red Cliffs in the Sunraysia region of Victoria, the sixth of seven children of Lesley and Hugh Wright.
member of the Australian Senate
Wright was born in 1961 at Red Cliffs in the Sunraysia region of Victoria, the sixth of seven children of Lesley and Hugh Wright.
Wright attended Wattle Park High School in Burwood before moving to MacRobertson Girls" High School for high achievers. After completing high school she studied arts/law at the University of Melbourne, later obtaining a graduate diploma in Environmental Studies in Adelaide.
She spent much of her childhood growing up in Melbourne after her family moved there in 1968. Wright spent 20 years working as a lawyer prior to her election to parliament. Wright was placed first on the South Australian Greens Senate ticket for the 2010 federal election.
Wright joined eight other Green Senators in the upper house from the start of July 2011, including incumbent South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
On commencing her senate term in July 2011, Wright was assigned the portfolios of Attorney-General, Native Title, Veterans" Affairs, Social Inclusion, Mental Health and Heritage within the federal Greens. She now holds the Attorney-General, Veterans" Affairs, Mental Health and Schools and Education Portfolios.
On 17 July 2015, Wright announced that she would be resigning from the Senate due to illness in her family. She gave her final speech on 19 August, and resigned on 9 September.
Robert Simms was appointed to the casual vacancy by a joint sitting of the Parliament of South Australia on 22 September 2015.
Wright is a founding member of the South Australian branch of the Greens (along with her husband Mark Parnell, a state MLC, generally considered the founder of the South Australian Greens). According to Wright, she postponed her political career at the time (1995) to raise children. The party received a 6.8 percent swing in South Australia, finishing with 13.3 percent of the statewide Senate vote.