Carolyn Hirsh

Carolyn Dorothy Hirsh (born 1 August 1937) is a former Australian politician representing Silvan Province in the Victorian Legislative Council. Elected as a member of the Australian Labor Party, she was forced to resign from the party in September 2004 after being booked for driving a car without a licence. This followed an incident earlier in the year when she had lost her licence after being booked by police with an alcohol reading of 0.07, while driving home from an ALP function. She sat as an independent member of the Legislative Council from then until November 2005, when she was re-admitted to the ALP, but was forced to resign a second time on 23 June 2006, after a second drink-driving incident.

Hirsh was born in Melbourne, though she attended high school in the rural town of Colac. She trained as a teacher at Geelong Teachers College and then Monash University, where she also studied psychology. After graduating from university, she was employed as a teacher of children with disabilities, and also worked for some years in her family business. She joined the Labor Party in the late 1960s, while involved with the campaign against the Vietnam War.

Hirsh worked as a psychologist for the Victorian Department of Education from 1980 to 1985, when she was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the member for Wantirna.

Hirsh was re-elected at the 1988 election, after which she was promoted to the position of Government Whip, but made an unsuccessful attempt to switch to the seat of Knox in 1992. After losing her seat, she returned to private practice as a psychologist. She made two unsuccessful attempts to move to federal politics, as the Labor candidate for the federal seat of La Trobe at the 1996 election and 1998 election. She taught at the Mountain District Learning Centre, in addition to her practice, from 1996 to 1998, before giving both away in 1999 and taking on a position at the Chisholm Institute of TAFE.

...
Wikipedia