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Robert James Brown
(27 December 27, 1944 - living) Australia

Bob Brown

Senator

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Bob Brown, born in 1944 in Oberon, NSW, began school at Trunkey Creek in 1952. He graduated in Medicine, University of Sydney, in 1968, and did medical practice Canberra, London, Sydney, Perth. In 1972 he moved to Tasmania to work in Launceston general practice.

In a 1969 musical interlude he played bass in a pianoforte duet of the full score of the Blue Danube at a concert in 1969, and was founding organiser of the Residents and Sisters for Activities in Leisure time (RASCAL) at Canberra Hospital. He first climbed Federation Peak in Tasmania's western wilderness in 1976, and first rafted down the Franklin the same year.

In 1975 Brown was United Tasmania Group candidate, and won his first Senate election. As a State MP, Bob Brown introduced a wide range of private member's initiatives, including for Freedom of Information, Death with Dignity, lowering parliamentary salaries, gay law reform, banning the battery-hen industry and nuclear free Tasmania. Some succeeded, others not.

A former medical practitioner, Brown was Director of the Wilderness Society which organised the blockade of the dam-works on Tasmania's' wild Franklin River in 1982/3. 1500 people were arrested and 600 jailed - including Dr Brown who spent 19 days in prison. On the day of his release, he was elected as the first Green into Tasmania's Parliament. After Federal government intervention, the Franklin River was protected in 1983.

In 1989, he led the 5-Greens parliamentary team which held the balance of power with the Labor Government. Dr Brown resigned from the State Parliament in 1993 when Christine Milne took over as leader of the Tasmanian Greens.

Bob Brown has been a life-long activist. As well as the Franklin campaign, he was shot at and assaulted at protests against logging at Farmhouse creek in 1986, and in 1995 was arrested and jailed twice for demonstrating peacefully to protect Tasmania's Tarkine Wilderness from roading and logging. In 1990, Bob Brown established the Australian Bush Heritage Fund to buy land for conservation.

Bob Brown was instrumental in forming the Australian Greens in 1992. In 1996 he was elected to the Australian Senate and has introduced bills for constitutional reform, forest protection, to block radioactive waste dumping, to ban mandatory sentencing and greenhouse abatement.

In keeping with the Greens' international perspective, he has travelled extensively, fostering Green politics and forming close links with Greens in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. In 2001 he was reelected to the Australian Senate.

Bob has a house on the Liffey River beneath snowy Drys Bluff in central Tasmania. He enjoys photography, sports, bushwalking, poetry, platypus watching and philosophy.

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