Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Lee Brown, as Senator Rhiannon was then known, was not only a fellow traveller but a proud and passionate pro-Soviet communist. So tonight I make exactly the same demand of Senator Rhiannon as she made of Hadgkiss in exactly the same terms: I urge Senator Rhiannon to provide details about her past. Of course, I am not the first person to ask this of Senator Rhiannon. She has many questions still to answer. As a former ASIO intelligence officer said, as quoted in a story entitled 'Secret past of Greens senator Lee Rhiannon' in The Australian on 28 January 2012:

Because of Lee's parents' political disposition, the Soviets were starting to groom Lee as a future fully fledged recruit, and getting in as early as possible so that they could maximise the degree to which they could define her cover and career.

And maximise they did. The same report also quotes recovering Communist Mark Aarons, a former associate of the Brown family, who wrote:

In 1977, Rhiannon led an SPA delegation to Moscow—