Meredith Anne Burgmann

Meredith Anne Burgmann (born 26 July 1947) is an Australian politician and Labor Party member and a former President of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Early years

Burgmann was born in July 1947 at Beecroft, New South Wales to parents Victor Dudley Burgmann (son of Canberra Anglican bishop Ernest Henry Burgmann) and Lorna Constance Bradbury.

In 1985 she married Glen Batchelor and they have one son. Batchelor and Burgmann divorced in 1990. She states she is the only person sent to prison for running onto a sporting field during a major sporting event. As an upper house member of parliament, she served as the chair on the Parliamentary Privileges and Ethics Committee. In that committee, she led an inquiry into certain paedophile conspiracy allegations made by the former politician Franca Arena. and that her time as a politician has shown her to be an "independent and intellectual member" of the New South Wales Parliament. She was elected as President of the council on 11 May.

As President, she continued to reduce the size and the scale of the traditional opening of State Parliament. For the 1999 opening, she axed the 29-gun salute and she invited just three ambassadors, one from Thailand and the other two from Cuba and Vietnam. That was criticised for being left leaning since the last two nations have communist governments. She further angered monarchists by ordering the removal of the Queen's portrait from the President's Office and replacing it with an Aboriginal dot painting.

She is aunt to the comedian Charles Firth and to former New South Wales Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Climate Change and the Environment and Minister for Women, Verity Firth. She was defeated in the mayoral ballot by incumbent Lord Mayor Clover Moore, becoming Labor's only councillor on the council.

Burgmann was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2020 Australia Day Honours for "significant service to the people and Parliament of New South Wales."

Burgmann was an Ambassador for the Sydney Swans from 2005 until 2018. She has also published articles on industrial, environmental and Aboriginal rights issues.

In 1998 Burgmann and her sister Verity wrote Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers' Federation.