The Australian Greens is a federation of eight state and territory parties which grew out of Australian environment movements in the 1970s and 1980s. The campaign to save Lake Pedder led to the formation of the United Tasmania Group in 1972. This was the first 'green party' in the world.

The 1980s were a time of enormous growth and professionalism in green movements, resulting in the election of Australia’s first green member of parliament. In 1984 a national conference was called and Greens parties were formed in Queensland and New South Wales. The NSW Greens stood candidates in the 1984 state election. In the same year Jo Vallentine was elected to the Senate for Western Australia as a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party, before leaving to form her own. In 1990 this group merged with others to form the WA Greens.

Throughout the 1980s forest campaigns in Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania strengthened and developed the green movement. At the end of the decade, the Wesley Vale Pulp Mill campaign saw three more Greens (Christine Milne, Di Hollister and Lance Armstrong) elected to the Tasmanian Parliament in 1989. With Bob Brown and Gerry Bates (who had been elected in 1986) they formed an alliance called The Green Independents. They held the balance of power, and the ALP governed with their support as a minority government until 1992.

The 1990s began with serious efforts to form a national Green political party. By the end of 1992, both the Australian Greens and a Victorian Greens party were established. In the national parliament, Jo Vallentine retired in 1992 and Christabel Chamarette filled her WA Greens Senate seat. In the 1993 federal election another WA Greens senator, Dee Margetts, was elected to the Senate, and she and Christobel held the balance of power in the Senate. Bob Brown was elected to the Senate for Tasmania in the 1996 election, while Christobel was not re-elected. Dee also lost her seat in the 1998 election, leaving Bob as the lone Green in the Senate.

The new century brought increasing promise. The 2001 federal election saw Bob re-elected and joined by Kerry Nettle for New South Wales. In a federal by-election in 2002, Michael Organ from Illawarra, NSW, became the first Greens member of the House of Representatives, but he lost the seat at the next general election.

In 2004, the Greens increased their Senate representation to four when Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle were joined by Christine Milne from Tasmania and Rachel Siewert from Western Australia.

At the 2007 Federal election, more than a million Australians voted Green. Bob Brown was resoundingly re-elected, but Kerry Nettle was not, despite an increase in her vote. Sarah Hanson-Young from South Australia and Scott Ludlam from Western Australia joined Bob, Christine and Rachel in the Senate, bringing the total number of Senators to five and therefore achieving official Parliamentary Party status. This new make-up of the Senate also put the Australian Greens into shared balance of power with two independents.

Timeline of environmental movement in Australia

1860s Probably Australia's first anti-logging campaign, to protect native forest at Ferntree Gully in Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne.
1879 Royal National Park created south of Sydney - world's second national park.
1909 Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia founded, Australia's first national conservation organisation
1918 Birds and Animals Protection Act.
1924 Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner gives a series of lectures laying out principles of biodynamic farming
1931-1933 Campaign by bushwalking clubs and conservationists to establish the Blue Gum Forest near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains as a nature reserve; one of the first campaigns to protect a wilderness area in Australia.
1927 Ernesto Genoni introduces biodynamic farming methods to Australia.
1932 NSW Federation of Bushwalking Clubs formed
1940 First use of term "organic farming" in the book Look to the Land by UK writer Walter James (Lord Northbourne).
1949 Fauna Protection Act
1955 Blue Mountains National Park and Warrumbungles National Park created in NSW
1957 National Parks Association created.
1966 Australian Conservation Foundation set up.
1967 Publication of Weeds and their Control by Joan and Eileen Bradley, laying out the "Bradley Method" of bush regeneration adopted by bush regeneration groups around Australia.
1968 Apollo 8 space mission delivers 'Earthrise' picture, sparking environmental awareness on a global scale
1971 First Federal Govt. Environment Department set up by McMahon coalition government.
1971 Aquarius Festival held in Nimbim: some festival participants decide to stay in region, establishing it as a focal point of Australian counter-culture.
1971-75 Sydney "green bans" by building unions where union members refused to work on developments threatening bushland and historic sites including The Rocks, Glebe, etc.
1972 UN Earth Summit and Stockholm Declaration: first attempt at global regulation of the environment.
1972 United Tasmania Group (UTG) set up with Bob Brown and Milo Dunphy as co-directors, largely to campaign against damming of Lake Pedder. Regarded as the world's first "green" political party.
1972 Total Environment Centre set up.
1972 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) set up as a global body for the organic movement.
1972-3: Anti-nuclear movement given impetus by opposition to French nuclear testing in Pacific.
1973 Lake Pedder in Tasmania flooded by hydro-electricity dam.
1974 The UTG in Tasmania, Conservation Party in Queensland and Victorian Environment Group contest Senate seats - the first "green" candidates for Federal office in Australia.
1974 Friends of the Earth Australia formed
1970s Builders Labourers Federation instigates a policy of "green bans" over development plans for Kellys Bush in Sydney.
1975 Project Jonah set up to campaign against whaling, leading to 1980 Whale Protection Act banning whaling in Australia.
1976 The Tasmanian Wilderness Society (later to become The Wilderness Society) set up at a meeting at Bob Brown's home in Tasmania.
1976 Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) established.
1977 ALP introduces no uranium mining policy (modified to "three-mines" policy in 1984).
1977 Greenpeace Australia Pacific set up, initially focusing on whaling.
1978 Kakadu National Park created.
1978 Australian whaling ends.
1978 Australian branch of WWF (then World Wildlife Fund; now Worldwide Fund for Nature) set up.
1979 Protests at Terania Creek in northern NSW as part of the Save the Rainforests campaign with protestors blocking logging; the first large, on-site, "direct action" environmental protest in Australia.
1979 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park created
1980 First green activist elected in Australia: Norm Sanders, for the Democrats, to the Tasmanian House of Assembly.
1982 Rainforest Conservation Society set up to campaign to protect the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland.
1982 Norm Sanders retires from Tasmanian state parliament, Bob Brown elected to replace him on a countback.
1982-3 Blockades and direct action campaign to prevent damming of the Franklin River.
1983 The Sydney Greens registers as the first Australian "Greens" party.
1983 Hawke ALP Federal Government grants South West Tasmania World Heritage status to prevent damming of the Franklin River by Tasmania's Hydro-Electric Commission following a grassroots campaign.
1983 campaign to save the Gorden River from being dammed.
1984 German Greens leader Petra Kelly visits Australia; urges creation of a national green party.
1984 Tasmanian Wilderness Society becomes a national organization as The Wilderness Society.
1984 Nuclear Disarmament Party set up - Jo Vallentine (WA) elected to federal Senate
1985 French Government agents sink the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.
1985 Queensland Greens set up.
1986 Gerry Bates elected to Tasmanian state parliament
1987 Montreal Protocol bans CFCs that are causing the hole in the ozone layer over Antartica.
1989 South Australian Greens set up.
1989 Christine Milne, Di Hollister and Lance Armstrong (standing as independents) join Bob Brown and Gerry Bates in Tasmanian state election and hold balance of power; Green-Labor Accord agreed.
1989 Australian Government bans use of CFCs to combat widening hole in ozone layer
1990 Greens WA set up.
1992 The Australian Greens Party formed as confederacy of all state parties.
1992 UN conference passes the Rio Declaration, signed by 178 nations, calling for more ecologically sustainable development.
1992 Jo Vallentine retires from federal Senate, replaced by Christabel Chamarette
1993 Dee Margetts (WA) elected to federal Senate - Greens hold balance of power
1996 Bob Brown (TAS) elected to federal Senate
1997 Kyoto Protocol; Australia under PM John Howard refuses to ratify.
1998 Protests stops Jabiluka uranium mine in Kakadu.
2000 Melbourne mass protests against World Economic Forum, following the "Battle for Seattle" at the World Trade Organisation summit in 1999.
2001 Stockholm Convention: treaty signed by 120 nations bans 12 key pollutants found in fertiliser and industrial waste.
2001 Kerry Nettle (NSW) elected to federal Senate
2001 Bob Brown re-elected to federal Senate
2002 In a by-election, Michael Organ (NSW) becomes the first Greens member of the Federal House of Representatives
2004 Rachel Siewert (WA) elected to federal Senate
2004 Christine Milne (TAS) elected to federal Senate
2005 Kyoto Protocol comes into effect - Australia and USA only first world countries not signed on
2007 Sarah Hanson-Young (SA) elected to federal Senate
2007 Scott Ludlam (WA) elected to federal Senate
2007 Bob Brown (TAS) re-elected to federal Senate
2007 Australian Greens raise representation to five federal members, achieve full political party status.
Adapted from original at Ecodirectory