Career
Kirner joined the Australian Labor Party in 1978 and became a member of its Socialist Left faction. In 1982, she was elected as a Labor member of the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house of the Victorian Parliament. In 1985, she was elected to the Cabinet of John Cain's Labor government and became Minister for Conservation, Forests and Lands. She proposed the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the first Australian legislation which gave legal protection of rare species.
While Minister, and in association with Heather Mitchell from the Victorian Farmers' Federation, Kirner was instrumental in the formation of the first Landcare groups.
At the 1988 election, Kirner shifted to the Legislative Assembly, becoming MP for Williamstown, and was promoted to the Education portfolio. In this portfolio Kirner carried out a series of controversial reforms aimed at reducing what Kirner saw as the class-based inequity of the education system, culminating in a new system of assessment, the Victorian Certificate of Education.
Read more about this topic: Joan Kirner
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