Three days in jail during the Franklin Dam blockade in the 1980s sparked a passion for activism that would take Milne from state to federal politics

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Christine Milne was a secondary school teacher in the early 1980s when the proposal to dam the Franklin River in Tasmania spurred her to change tack and become an environmental activist.

A born and bred Tasmanian, and self-confessed “farm girl”, Milne was instrumental in the ultimately successful blockade of the dam, though the protest saw her jailed for three days.

“I thought, if that’s the worst they can do to you in Tasmania, then I’m up for it. From that time on there was no looking back for me as an activist,” Milne told the Monthly in 2008.

A few years after her brief imprisonment, Milne became the face of the opposition to a new pulp mill being built in her hometown of Wesley Vale in north-western Tasmania.

She had led an alliance of concerned community members to contest the pulp mill, and public outcry over the proposal ultimately led its foreign backers to cancel construction.

The pulp mill and dam became a major political issues for Tasmania, and prompted federal discussion. Milne was elected to the Tasmanian parliament in 1989, off the back of her successful conservation campaigns.



The Greens held five seats in the state parliament after the 1989 election, giving them the balance of power and thrusting environmental issues into the spotlight.

Milne became leader of the Tasmanian Greens in 1993 when the founder of the party, Bob Brown, left state politics to pursue a federal Senate seat. She presided over a loose alliance between Labor and the Greens in the state, and pursued a number of social reforms, including gay rights, gun control and an apology to the stolen generations of Indigenous Australians.

Milne told Guardian Australia earlier this year of her joy in being able to take part in the movement to end Tasmania’s draconian anti-homosexuality laws.

She continued to push for gay rights, most notably same-sex marriage, at a federal level after winning a Senate seat in 2004.

But it was the party’s policies on climate change following the 2010 federal election, and after Milne took on the federal leadership in 2012, that caused the most contention.

Milne won re-election to the Senate in 2010, when the Greens achieved a massive swing towards them. The party’s first elected House of Representatives MP, Adam Bandt, helped Labor deliver minority government.

The party was criticised for shooting down the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme and then going on to back then prime minister Julia Gillard’s carbon pricing scheme, after winning funding for renewables through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Change Authority.

Milne has vociferously rejected the lowering of the renewable energy target (RET), saying the target must remain high to end the dominance of fossil fuels.

But perhaps her most contentious decision as leader has been to block the rise of the fuel excise, citing the party’s opposition to funnelling cash made from the measure to the building of new roads.

“It is a difficult issue for us because we want to see people using less polluting fuels, but if we facilitate this we will see more and more money going into roads with more cars on them,” she said in June last year.

Senior government ministers have called on the Greens to reconsider its position on raising the excise after hearing news of Milne’s departure on Wednesday.

Milne cited family reasons, particularly the fact she is about to become a first-time grandmother, as her reasons for leaving politics.