Background
Hanson-Young was born in Melbourne, and grew up near Orbost in East Gippsland.
member of the Australian Senate
Hanson-Young was born in Melbourne, and grew up near Orbost in East Gippsland.
She graduated from the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor of Social Sciences in 2002.
She is the youngest Senator, and the youngest woman, ever elected to the Australian Parliament. She has worked on several community projects in Orbost including the establishment of the Orbost Youth Centre. While studying she was Environment Officer from 2001 to 2002, and then President from 2002 to 2003, of the Students" Association of the University of Adelaide.
In 2004, Hanson-Young worked as a bank teller.
And, from the same year until she took parliamentary office in 2008, she worked for Amnesty International as Campaign Manager for South Australia and the Northern Territory. As of 2006, she was studying for a postgraduate law degree.
Prior to her entry into politics, she also worked as media advisor to Mark Parnell (Société Anonyme Greens) in the 2006 South Australian election and was a campaigner with Justice for Refugees (Société Anonyme). Political career
Hanson-Young was elected senator for South Australia at the 2007 federal election.
She was the first Greens senator to be elected in that state, the youngest person—at 25—ever elected to the Australian senate, and the youngest woman ever elected to the Australian parliament.
Although the South Australian Green primary vote remained relatively unchanged, preferences from the Australian Labor Party provided the required quota for a Greens senator Hanson-Young became the focus of attention on 18 June 2009 when the Senate President ordered the removal of her two-year-old daughter from the Senate chamber during a division. Public reaction on the matter was divided, and ignited a debate on accommodating children and their carers in the workplace.
Hanson-Young challenged Christine Milne for the Green deputy leadership in October 2010 but was unsuccessful.
Following the resignation of Australian Greens leader Bob Brown in 2012, she again nominated for the deputy leadership but lost, by an undisclosed margin, to Adam Bandt. Hanson-Young was re-elected to the Senate at the 2013 federal election.
In December 2013, Hanson-Young, along with Senators Louise Pratt (ALP) and Sue Boyce (Lecture Notes in Physics) established a cross-party working group on marriage equality.
Hanson-Young was a candidate for the South Australian Legislative Council in the 2006 state election, ranked fourth on the Greens" ticket. As of 2011 Hanson-Young"s portfolio responsibilities within the Greens include childcare, education, sexuality, human rights, gender identity and the status of women and youth.
She has been a Greens member of the Senate since July 2008, representing the state of South Australia.