Sarah Hanson-Young

née Sarah Hanson (born 1981)

“You are equal and you are loved.”

Years in political office: 2008–present

Position: senator for South Australia, 2008–present

Party affiliation: Greens

Hometown: Melbourne, Australia

Top causes: refugee rights, fighting sexual harassment, and climate change

Life Story

Hanson-Young grew up in the small town of Orbost, four hours outside of the city of Melbourne and near Australia’s southeastern coast. Living in the small community taught her the value of being active in the political system. “I was always exposed to the idea if you care about your community, if you’re not happy with something, you do something to change it,” she said. She met Zane Young, the eventual father of her daughter, Kora, while still a teen, and they later married and divorced. At the University of Adelaide, she was president of the students’ association and active on environmental issues. After graduation she worked on the progressive Greens’s political campaigns and for Amnesty International.

On a day in 2006, twenty-four-year-old Hanson-Young learned both that she had been chosen to be a Senate candidate and that she was pregnant. The second part caught her off guard, because doctors had said her polycystic ovary syndrome and the abortion she’d had at the age of nineteen had severely limited her chances of conceiving. She wasn’t the only person unprepared for the baby. In her book En Garde, Hanson-Young writes about how other Greens politicians scolded her for hurting her political career by going through with the pregnancy and even accused her of having hidden her desire to have a kid from party officials to get the nomination. “There’s nothing quite like proving those who doubt you wrong,” she writes, after having her daughter, Kora, and still managing to win her election. “I was off to [Australian capital] Canberra with my little companion by my side.”

Hanson-Young was twenty-five years old when she was first elected to the Senate, making her the youngest Australian ever to achieve that feat, and the first Greens representative elected in her state. Party leader Bob Brown endorsed Hanson-Young as the candidate who would speak to the needs of young voters.

Certainly, she spoke to the needs of young mothers. In 2009 Hanson-Young, who wanted to vote on a bill, brought her then two-year-old daughter, Kora, into the Senate chamber. Under Senate protocol, she was forced to remove the crying Kora, which Hanson-Young said made her feel “humiliated.” But the incident may have helped kick off a slow movement for change: in 2016 the Australian parliament began to allow its members to breastfeed in the chamber.

As with many young women in power across the globe, Hanson-Young’s gender and traditionally attractive appearance have made her the target of sexism and threats of violence. She once sued a magazine that superimposed a photo of her face on the body of a lingerie model. In 2018 a Sydney police officer was fined and placed on probation after calling her office and threatening to rape her younger sister. But neither of these are the most publicized case of chauvinist discourse directed Hanson-Young’s way.

After the murder of a young woman who was walking home late at night, the Australian Senate was debating restrictions on pepper spray and tasers for self-defense. Hanson-Young said, “Men should stop raping women.”

Senator David Leyonhjelm retorted that she should stop “shagging men.” He went even further days later, saying Hanson-Young was “well-known for liking men.” Many saw the remarks as indicative of Australia’s problem with “larrikin” (foul-mouthed) politicians generally excused for their bad behavior under the pretext that they’re being unconventional. Hanson-Young made no such excuses, and she sued Leyonhjelm for defamation.

When questioned why she would subject herself to such a high-profile court trial, Hanson-Young told a reporter, “I am doing this because the woman on the factory floor, or the woman who works at the bakery, or the flight attendant who has things like this held at her, comments made, harassment in the workplace, many of those women can’t stand up. . . . If we can’t clean it up in our nation’s parliament, well, where can we do it?”

What’s on Her Agenda

One of the political battles for which Hanson-Young is best known is her fight for immigrant rights. In 2014 she warned the public of inhumane conditions on the island of Nauru, which the Australian government has used as a refugee detention center since 2001. A governmental review would later expose widespread abuse on Nauru, including rape and the sexual assault of minors, of its largely Asian and African refugee population. In 2015 Hanson-Young added amendments to a visa application rights bill that called for the release of all children in immigration detention. It passed the Senate but stalled in Australia’s conservative-controlled House of Representatives and its unwillingness to ease the process for people coming into the country.

As evidence of inhumane treatment of refugees on Nauru mounted, Hanson-Young would comment on “[the current Australian immigration] policy that is hurting people, breaking people, and let’s make no mistake about it—that is exactly what it is designed to do.” In 2016 the government denied her permission to return to Nauru. The island continues to be a source of shame for many Australians, and Hanson-Young has called her country’s anti-refugee campaigns “fearmongering propaganda.”

Hanson-Young has also spoken out against Australia’s rapid rate of animal species extinction, petitioned the prime minister for bans on plastic products, and advocated against drilling in the Great Australian Bight, a bay off the country’s southern coast. She holds a sense of urgency about climate change, especially since in 2019, it was announced that Australia’s greenhouse emissions had risen for the fourth year in a row—in violation of the pledges the country has made to do the opposite.

At the end of 2019, blistering droughts led to devastating bush fires across Australia that incinerated some 26 million acres (10.5 million ha) and killed one billion animals, many of them from endangered species. Hanson-Young, whose family home in Victoria’s East Gippsland barely survived the flames, led a chorus of voices connecting the disaster to climate change. “What we’ve seen out of this bush fire crisis—this is an environment in collapse,” she said, calling for the government to vastly increase the resources it was using for helping with recovery from the fires.

Awesome Achievements

• Hanson-Young broke down in tears on the Senate floor while speaking in favor of a 2017 bill to legalize same-sex marriage. “It doesn’t matter who you are, who you like, who you might have a crush on, or who you fall in love with; the nation has your back,” she said. The bill passed.
• In 2018 Hanson-Young called for the establishment of a parliamentary women’s caucus to provide a space for women politicians from all parties to unite against the male leaders who launch misogynist verbal attacks on their female peers.

Quotables

“With enough of us working towards it, we can build the kind of future we want, not the kind of future we are on course for.”

“Our planet is in crisis, our environment is in collapse, and politicians have sat on their hands for too long and done nothing.”

“Real men don’t insult and threaten women, they don’t slut shame them, and they don’t attack them and make them feel bullied in their workplace.”