| Australian politician and warlord (keep reading).
Born in 1948 in the wheatbelt of Western Australia, Carmen studied psychology at the University of Western Australia where she was awarded with a doctorate. She practiced and taught psychology until in 1986 she won a seat in the West Australian state parliament for the Australian Labor Party. After the resignation of Peter Dowding over the WA Inc scandal, the relatively cleanskin Carmen became premier of Western Australia - the first woman in Australia to govern a state.
But voters were still angry with the ALP, and dumped the incumbent government nonetheless in 1993 for Richard Court's Liberal Party. There was also the issue of the Penny Easton Affair: in 1992 in parliament the ALP circulated a petition alledging that Richard Court leaked information to a Ms Penny Easton who was fighting a divorce case in the family court. Penny Easton subsequently committed suicide four days later, and at the time of the election there was still doubt over whether or not Carmen Lawrence as Premier had authorised the ALP parliamentarian to introduce the petition.
The following year Carmen Lawrence was earmarked to federal politics, winning the seat of Fremantle and serving as Minister for Health and Human Services. She was increasingly mooted as a possible future Prime Minister, until back in Perth Richard Court instigated a Royal Commission into the Penny Easton Affair. Later Carmen Lawrence gave evidence under oath, that subsequently the Commission found to be false, and Prime Minister Paul Keating was pressured to dump Carmen from the Cabinet, which proved to be irrelevant anyway since the ALP was voted out of office in February 1996.
Carmen Lawrence held some shadow ministerial positions in Opposition, but in December 2002 she resigned to the backbench in protest at the ALP leadership's inaction in opposing the Howard government over social issues, especially the mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
In December 2003 Carmen Lawrence was voted President of the Australian Labor Party.
Attentive computer gamers might recall Carmen Lawrence in the Activision strategy game Civilization III - Call to Power, as the default female potentate for the Australian tribe. She once wiped out my invasion fleet of Roman mechanised infantry with a Kraken.
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