Jennie George AO (born Eugenie Sinicky; 28 August 1947) is an Australian politician, and former

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...

member of the

Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. The term of members of the ...

from November 2001 to July 2010, representing the

Division of Throsby The Division of Throsby was an Australian electoral division in the state of New South Wales. The division was named after Charles Throsby, a prominent pioneer and explorer in the early nineteenth century of the areas to the south of Sydney. ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

Early life

George was born in Trani, Italy, where her parents Oleg and Natasha were displaced persons from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Oleg and Natasha separated in 1955 and divorced in 1958. Oleg died in 1960, aged 39, after years of heavy drinking and smoking, during which he was frequently violent towards his wife and sometimes his daughter.Brad Norington, "Unions of the Heart", ''Sydney Morning Herald'', Spectrum, 7 November 1998, p. 7s She was educated at the

Burwood Girls High School Burwood Girls' High School is a public, comprehensive, secondary school for girls, located in Croydon, an inner western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Established in 1929, the school enrolled approximately 1,150 students in 2 ...

(where she was first called Jennie, as Eugenie was deemed too hard to pronounce),

Sydney University The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's six ...

and the

Sydney Teachers College The Sydney Teachers' College was a tertiary education institution that trained school teachers in Sydney, Australia, Sydney, Australia. It existed from 1906 until the end of 1981, when it became the Sydney Institute of Education, a part of the ne ...

. In February 1968 she married Paddy George, a full-time activist for the Communist Party and NSW State Secretary of the Eureka Youth League, of which she was also a member. Jennie George was a secondary school teacher and an active member of the teacher's union. George was elected General Secretary of the

New South Wales Teachers Federation The New South Wales Teachers Federation (also known simply as the Federation) is the registered trade union that covers New South Wales (NSW) public school teachers. The New South Wales Teachers Federation represents all teachers in NSW public ...

1980–82.

Career

George was Vice President of the

Australian Council of Trade Unions The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), originally the Australasian Council of Trade Unions, is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions and eight trades and la ...

(ACTU) in 1987, Assistant Secretary of the ACTU 1991-96 and President of the ACTU 1996- March 2000. She was the first woman to hold this position. She was Assistant National Director, Trade Union Training Authority 1989-91 and a board member of Delta Electricity from 2000 to 2001. In November 1994 she was endorsed as the Left faction's candidate for a Victorian Senate seat. When Victorian Senator

Olive Zakharov Alice Olive Zakharov (19 March 1929 – 6 March 1995) was an Australian politician. Zakharov was elected as an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian Senate in 1983. Former Senator Graham Richardson, a leader of the party's right fac ...

, also a member of the Left, was killed in a road accident in March 1995, it was assumed that George would be nominated to fill the casual vacancy. However, factional negotiations resulted in the seat going to a member of the Right faction,

Jacinta Collins Jacinta Mary Ann Collins (born 4 September 1962) is a former Australian politician who served as a Senator for Victoria from 1995 to 2005 and again from 2008 to 2019. She represented the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and was the party's deputy l ...

. George then withdrew her candidacy and did not reconsider a political career until returning to Sydney after leaving the ACTU. She sought support for a seat in either of the houses of the NSW Parliament, but this came to nothing. She was then offered a chance to stand for the federal seat of Throsby in New South Wales in 2001. George served on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage from 20 March 2002, on the Standing Committee on Family and Community Services from 20 March 2002 to 31 August 2004 and on the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services from 2 December 2004. She was Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage from 2004 to 2007. She retired from Parliament at the 2010 federal election. Unlike other ACTU Presidents (including most notably former Prime Minister Bob Hawke) who went on to be elected to Federal Parliament, George did not hold a ministerial position during her federal parliamentary career. She was made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the

Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

on 10 June 2013.

References

External links

Jennie George MP official web site
* {{DEFAULTSORT:George, Jennie 1947 births Living people Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Australian schoolteachers Australian trade unionists Members of the Australian House of Representatives Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Throsby Australian republicans Labor Left politicians Italian emigrants to Australia Australian people of Russian descent People from Trani People from Wollongong University of Sydney alumni Women members of the Australian House of Representatives Delegates to the Australian Constitutional Convention 1998 20th-century Australian politicians Officers of the Order of Australia 21st-century Australian politicians 21st-century Australian women politicians 20th-century Australian women politicians