Giz Watson

Giz Watson (born 18 January 1957) is an English-Australian politician.

Biography

Watson was born in 1957 in Eastleigh, a town in Hampshire, England, and emigrated to Western Australia in September 1967, travelling extensively through the state. She studied environmental science at Murdoch University and, after leaving university to do voluntary work for a couple of years, graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1980. Watson was involved in protests in Western Australia against the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. She also became involved in 1979 in the first forest blockades at Wagerup against clear felling of jarrah forests for bauxite mining.

She returned to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, where she was involved with training women to participate in the peace camp outside the Royal Air Force base RAF Greenham Common, which protested against the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles at the base. In 1985 she participated in the first encirclement by women protestors of Greenham Common. In 1984 Watson attained a trade certificate in carpentry from the City and Guilds of London Institute in London. It was soon after this that she joined the anarchist building collective in London, with everyone from architects to labourers getting the same pay, making decisions equally and subsidising worthy projects.

In 1985 she returned to Australia and ran a building and construction business in Western Australia. In 1992, Watson became one of only...
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