Main Content
Juanita Nielsen Lectures
Juanita Nielsen Memorial Lecture
Monday, 07 April 2008
In 2001 Greens MP and women's spokesperson Lee Rhiannon founded the annual Juanita Nielsen Memorial Lecture to commemorate Juanita Nielsen and encourage recognition of women in public life who are standing up on issues that matter. The lecture is open to the public and the guest speaker addresses the audience on an issue of current concern.
Juanita Nielsen, publisher of the independent newspaper NOW and active campaigner against high-rise development in Kings Cross, disappeared in July 1975. Her murderers were never brought to justice. The circumstances of her disappearance remain unresolved but it is commonly believed that she was murdered for her stand on the environment and the rights of low income residents.
2009 JUANITA NIELSEN MEMORIAL LECTURE:
Guest Speaker: Professor Larissa Behrendt
Topic - Indigenous people and human rights: a litmus test for social policy (read speech)
6:15pm for 6:30pm start
Monday 1st June 2009
Mori Gallery, 168 Day Street, Sydney.
Organised by Greens MP Lee Rhiannon.
The Northern Territory intervention and other policies that target Aboriginal communities ignore international human rights standards. This lecture will explore the false dichotomy being presented by proponents of Indigenous policy who assert that it is necessary to suspend basic human rights in order to achieve policy aims.
Prof. Larissa Behrendt is a Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman and Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. She holds positions on the Land and Environment Court, Serious Offenders Review Board, Bangarra Dance Theatre, National Indigenous Television Ltd, Museum of Contemporary Art and Tranby Aboriginal College.
Eleanor Gibbs will speak on the life and times of Juanita Nielsen. El is a Greens Councillor in the Blue Mountains who has worked for over a decade for not-for-profit and community organisations, with a particular focus on young people and housing.
PAST LECTURES:
2009 - Indigenous people and human rights: a litmus test for social policy
2008 - The fight for Justice in an era of Climate Change and Peak Oil
2007 - Compassion in Politics
2006 - Politics, Progress and Sedition
2005 - The Rise of a Second Superpower
2004 - The Politics of Fighting Back
2003 - Passion, Politics an Public Education
2002 - Pain and Pleasure in Politics
2001 - Wild Ways to Win
ABOUT JUANITA NIELSEN:
Juanita Nielsen was an Australian heiress to the Mark Foys retail fortune. In the 1970s Nielsen was the publisher of NOW, an alternative newspaper in the Sydney suburb of Kings Cross, New South Wales, where she lived. She conducted a vigorous editorial campaign in support of the 'green ban' movement against the redevelopment of Victoria Street by F. W. Theeman's real-estate company, Victoria Point Pty Ltd. With her neighbour and trade-union activist Jack ('Mick') Fowler, she played a prominent role in mobilizing local residents against the demolition of Victoria Street's historic terraces and the eviction of their tenants.
Juanita Nielsen disappeared on 4 July 1975 and it is generally believed that she was murdered because of her anti-development and anti-corruption stance. A coronial inquest determined that Nielsen had been murdered, and although the case has never been officially solved it is widely believed that Nielsen was killed by agents of the developers.
Although unable to establish the exact place and manner of her death, the Coroner found 'evidence to show that the police inquiries were inhibited by an atmosphere of corruption, real or imagined, that existed at the time'. In 1994 the Commonwealth Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority further castigated investigative ineptitude in the case and emphasized links between her presumed murder, property developers and the criminal milieu at Kings Cross.
Despite public outcry the mystery of Juanita Nielsen’s death remains a major case in the annals of unsolved Australian crimes. The circumstances of her disappearance have been fictionalised in the films Heatwave (1982) and The Killing of Angel Street (1981). In July 1983 the Sydney City Council opened a recreation centre in the Juanita Nielsen Building, near her former residence in Woolloomooloo.