Janine Haines - Political Career

Political Career

She became the assistant of Robin Millhouse, an important player in the South Australian conservative party the Liberal and Country League. Millhouse founded the Liberal Movement and the short-lived New LM which merged into the Australian Democrats in 1977.

She was appointed to fill a casual vacancy in the Senate by the Labor premier Don Dunstan, on 14 December 1977. Dunstan was constitutionally obliged to appoint a senator from the same party as the resigning Senator Steele Hall, who had been elected as a representative of the former Liberal Movement. Hall had in fact joined the Liberal Party. Controversially, Dunstan chose a member of the Australian Democrats, regarding it as the successor party to the Liberal Movement despite the fact that a majority of LM ex-members joined the Liberal Party. However, Haines had stood on the same Liberal Movement ticket from which Hall had been elected in 1975.

Haines did not contest the Australian federal election, 1977, and her Senate term expired on 30 June 1978. She was elected for a six-year term at the Australian federal election, 1980. On 14 August 1986, she was chosen by Democrats members as Senate leader on the retirement of inaugural leader Don Chipp.

She remained Senate leader until resigning to contest the House of Representatives seat of Kingston in the March 1990 election, believing the Democrats needed a "high profile lower house presence". She was unsuccessful in the face of a negative campaign waged against her by both major parties swapping preferences. She was succeeded as interim Senate leader for several months by deputy Dr Michael Macklin (Qld), pending the customary election of a new leader by party members, at which Janet Powell was successful. In 2001, she supported her close friend Meg Lees for leadership of the party against Natasha Stott Despoja.