Janet Powell

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Democrats Senate members, 1987-1990: seated Michael Macklin and Janine Haines, rear left to right Jean Jenkins, John Coulter, Norm Sanders, Paul McLean and Janet Powell.

Janet Frances Powell (born September 29, 1942) in Nhill, Victoria, is an Australian politician.

She was appointed a Senator for Victoria, representing the Australian Democrats, upon the resignation of the party's founder, Don Chipp, in 1986. She was elected by the people the following year. She became the third leader of the party, from July 1, 1990 to August 19, 1991. Fellow senator Sid Spindler's relationship with her was used as leverage to remove her from the leadership.^[1] After internal disagreements related to her loss of the leadership she resigned from the party in 1992. She formed her own political party, the Janet Powell Independents' Network, continuing as an independent senator until she was defeated at the 1993 election. She achieved 33,177 votes (1.2%), well below the quota required for a seat.^[2] The fledgling political party was voluntarily deregistered after her defeat. Meg Lees followed this pattern 11 years later.

In 1996, she campaigned for Greens leader Bob Brown, and in 2004, she joined the Australian Greens, citing that they were more capable of achieving the function of a third force in Australian politics. In the Victorian legislative election, 2006 she stood for the Greens in the Eastern Metropolitan Region. She was the last on the Greens ticket, though she polled the most votes of any non-lead Greens candidate in that electorate, not enough to gain a seat, however.

[edit] References

^ "A cautionary tale of hypocrisy and ambition", The Age, 5 July 2002. Retrieved on 2008-03-02.
^ Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliamentary Handbook, 1993, p. 501