Elaine Cafferty Carbines (born
Elaine Cafferty, 4 February 1957) is an Australian politician. She was an
Australian Labor Party member of the
Victorian Legislative Council from September 1999 to November 2006, representing
Geelong Province. A former teacher and community campaigner, Carbines was a prominent backbench member of the government, often raising issues of local concern. She was a member of the
Labor Right faction.
Early life
Carbines was born in
Manchester,
England, but moved to
Australia in 1968 after completing her elementary schooling. She received her secondary education at
Mitcham High School, and studied teaching (BA 1978, Dip Ed 1979) at
Monash University.
It was at university where she joined the Labor Party, in response to the controversial dismissal of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by Governor-General John Kerr. She worked as a secondary school teacher, mostly in underprivileged areas for the next twenty years.
In 1988 she gained a Dip Hum from La Trobe University.
She is married to Shane Carbines, a former umpire and senior official with the Geelong Football Umpires League. They have two children, Hannah, b1989 and Scott, b1991. Elaine is also stepmother to Anthony and Nick. She also actively tried to engage with the community, frequently attending public meetings and raising community concerns in parliament. This earned her some prominent supporters in the Geelong community; despite her often left-wing views, the head of the city's Chamber of Commerce, in noting that the state's second-largest city had no members of the ministry, prominently singled out Carbines as the city's best hope of obtaining one.
Carbines also been vocal on issues of broader social significance, such as the treatment of refguees, recognition of the Australian Aboriginal flag and the issue of Tibetan independence. As a member of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet Group, Carbines was among those who put their names to an advertisement taken out by the Australia-Tibet Council during a visit to Australia by Chinese President Hu Jintao during 2003. There was some controversy when it became public that the Chinese Consul-General, Junting Tian, had raised the matter of her involvement in the campaign with Premier Steve Bracks and had sent Carbines a letter warning her against becoming involved in Tibet-related issues, which she later described as "intimidatory".
Despite Carbines' local popularity, rumors began circulating as early as 2004 that she would face a challenge to her preselection for the 2006 state election due to factional issues. The situation has been further complicated by major changes to the format of the Legislative Council due to be introduced at the election, which will see Carbines' two-member electorate be merged into a significantly larger five-member electorate. Local media reported in October 2005 that two factionally connected Melbourne unionists were being tipped for the first two easily winnable positions on the party's ticket, with Carbines likely to be faced with the choice of taking the third potentially winnable "death seat" or contesting Legislative Assembly preselection against lower-profile, but better-connected colleagues Ian Trezise or Michael Crutchfield. Carbines was apparently saved when Bracks personally intervened on her behalf in January 2006, asking factional chiefs to find her and four upper house MPs a safe seat. This did not happen and Cabines lost her seat to Peter Kavanagh of the Democratic Labor Party after a recount.
References
Official site
Category:1957 births
Category:Living people
Category:Australian Labor Party politicians
Category:Members of the Victorian Legislative Council
Category:Monash University alumni
Category:People from Geelong
Category:Politicians from Manchester
Category:Australian people of English descent
Category:Australian schoolteachers
Category:Australian women in politics
