Linda Burney

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Linda Jean Burney (b. 1957) is an Australian politician, elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.

Burney is of Wiradjuri descent and grew up in Whitton, near Leeton. She obtained a Diploma of Teaching from the then Mitchell College of Advanced Education and she began teaching at Lethbridge Park public school in western Sydney in 1979. She has been involved since the mid-1980s in the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and has been involved in the development and implementation of the first Aboriginal education policy in Australia.[1] Burney was later the Director-General of the New South Wales Department of Aboriginal Affairs.[2] In 2006 she was elected National Vice President of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Burney was elected as the ALP member for Canterbury in 2003. In her inaugural speech to the Legislative Assembly she said, referring to the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) Act, 1967:

For the first ten years of my life, like all indigenous people at that time, I was not a citizen of this country. We existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of New South Wales.[3]

Currently Burney is Minister for Fair Trading, Minister for Youth, and Minister for Volunteering[4] - the first Aboriginal person to be appointed as a minister in NSW.[5]

Her partner, until his death in May 2006, was Rick Farley.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Burney, Linda Jean (c. 1957 - ). Australian Women. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
  2. ^ Linda Burney. University of Western Sydney. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
  3. ^ Linda Burney's Inaugural Speech To Parliament. NSW/ACT Independent Education Union. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
  4. ^ Ms Linda Jean Burney, HonDEd, DipEd MP. Members of Parliament. Parliament of New South Wales. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.
  5. ^ NIT. National Indigenous Times. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.
Persondata
NAME Burney, Linda Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION New South Wales politician
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH


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