Lance John Edward Armstrong (born 17 February 1940) is an Australian former politician. Born in

Perth, Western Australia Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, he was active in

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

and is currently a minister with the

Uniting Church The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) was founded on 22 June 1977, when most congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and almost all the churches of the Congregational Union ...

in Albury.

Political career

In 1989, Armstrong was elected, together with

Christine Milne Christine Anne Milne (; born 14 May 1953) is an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Tasmania. She was the leader of the parliamentary caucus of the Australian Greens from 2012 to 2015. Milne stepped down as leader on 6 May 2015, ...

, Di Hollister, and incumbents

Gerry Bates Gerard Maxwell Bates (born 13 September 1950) is an Australian environmental lawyer and academic, and former politician. Early life and education Bates was born in Lancashire, England in 1950. He studied at the University of Birmingham where he ...

and

Bob Brown Robert James Brown (born 27 December 1944) is a former Australian politician, medical doctor and environmentalist. He was a senator and the parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens. Brown was elected to the Australian Senate on the Tasman ...

, to the

Tasmanian House of Assembly The House of Assembly, or Lower House, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. The other is the Legislative Council or Upper House. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Hobart. The Assembly has 25 m ...

for Bass as a member of a group of independents under the leadership of

, after a community backlash against a proposed paper pulp mill near Devonport. They together formed an alliance called the Green Independents, and held the balance of power in the government for three years, keeping Michael Field's minority Labor Party government in power in an arrangement called the

Labor–Green Accord The Labor–Green Accord was a 1989 political agreement between the Labor Party and the Tasmanian Greens (then called the Green Independents) to form government in the Australian state of Tasmania after the 1989 general election had resulted in ...

. The state election of 1992 saw all five sitting Greens re-elected, but with a drop in their vote of around 25% and with a majority Liberal government in power. After the election, these independents were reconstituted as the

Tasmanian Greens The Tasmanian Greens are a political party in Australia which developed from numerous environmental campaigns in Tasmania, including the flooding of Lake Pedder and the Franklin Dam campaign. They form a part of the Australian Greens. The party ...

. However, they still operated akin to independents, as the Tasmanian Greens had adopted the policy of allowing parliamentary members a "conscience vote" on all issues. In April, Armstrong introduced a bill to restrict advertising and display of publications. This bill was aimed at the display of publications such as ''

People A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...

'' and ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...

'' in newsagents, which Armstrong argued were degrading to women, although magazine ''

Green Left Weekly ''Green Left'', previously known as ''Green Left Weekly'', is an Australian socialist newspaper, written by progressive activists to "present the views excluded by the big business media". The newspaper was founded in 1990. Green Left is the d ...

'' argued that "Armstrong's censorship legislation is likely to increase the climate of repressiveness around sexuality". At the 1996 election, four Greens were returned and the Greens achieved the balance of power with a Liberal minority government, but Armstrong lost his seat of Bass.

After politics

Armstrong is currently a Uniting Church minister in Albury-Wodonga. In 2008, he controversially distributed a flyer urging residents not to vote for Henk van de Ven in Albury's local government elections, accusing van de Ven of "forceful and belligerent behaviour" in relation to an occasional child-care centre being built on council parkland.Jones, Howard
Reverend targets councillor
''The Border Mail'', 9 September 2008.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Armstrong, Lance 1940 births Living people Australian Greens members of the Parliament of Tasmania Members of the Tasmanian House of Assembly Uniting Church in Australia ministers Politicians from Perth, Western Australia