Elaine Carbines (born February 4, 1957) is an Australian politician. She has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Victorian Legislative Council since September 1999, representing Geelong Province.

Carbines was born in Manchester in the United Kingdom, but moved to Australia after completing her elementary schooling. She underwent her secondary education at Mitcham High School, and studied teaching 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 graduated in 1979, and for the next twenty years, worked as a secondary school teacher, mostly in underprivileged areas.

Throughout her working life, Carbines remained active in politics, having been a party member since university. She was the secretary of Labor's Belmont branch in 1994, and of the Portarlington branch from 1995 to 1997. In 1996, she made an unsuccessful bid for the seat of Bellarine in the Legislative Assembly. She was a delegate to the party's state conference, representing the federal electorate of Corangamite, from 1995 to 2004.

Carbines was also actively involved in several environmental campaigns, most notably the attempt to stop the move of the Coode Island chemical plant to the environmentally sensitive Point Lillias , and a proposal to build a rowing course on the site of the Belmont Common, another environmentally sensitive area on the outskirts of Geelong. When Carbines won Labor pre-selection to make a second run for office - this time for the Legislative Council seat of Geelong Province in the lead-up to the 1999 state election, the campaign against both developments became a key part of her platform. On election day, she received a swing of nearly five percent, and defeated sitting Liberal member Bill Hartigan on preferences.

Carbines was a member of the Road Safety and Library Committees in her first three years in office, but was initially overlooked for ministerial duties. She also led the Live Music Taskforce, which attempted to solve issues related to the future of the live music scene in Melbourne, which many perceived to be under threat as a result of venues closing due to noise complaints and development. In March 2002, in the leadup to the election due later that year, she was made Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Training. In December that year, after Labor's election victory, she was instead made Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment.

Carbines is a member of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet group. She 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".

External link

• Official site