"You can imagine how people mocked us for starting a party for animals," says Marianne Thieme, a Dutch politician, lawyer and animal rights advocate, who is in Australia this month for the 2016 Voiceless Animal Law Lecture Series,

"They made fun of us, they couldn't believe their ears when they heard of our existence. 'What's next?' they asked. 'A party for plants?'

"But there were also people - including feminists, famous authors, intellectuals, actors, singers and opinion leaders - who saw us as the next emancipation movement.

"After the liberation of slaves, women, giving rights to children, the next logical step was to consider the interests of animals seriously, to look beyond the interests of our own species."

Public awareness of the legalised abuse of animals has resulted in the development of a fierce global movement to represent the interests of animals in politics.

Thieme is the leader and co-founder of the Dutch Party for the Animals, the world's first elected political party with a global agenda focused on animal rights, nature and the environment.

The party won two seats in the Dutch House of Representatives during the 2006 Dutch general election. Now, it has 50 elected representatives at various levels of government.

The party has been the inspiration for 13 political parties focused on animal justice across the globe: Australia, Portugal and Germany now all have animal justice party representatives elected to parliament.

Thieme will speak at 10 events in most Australian capital cities for the lecture series, which will assess how our political system can protect the interests of animals. She will be joined by Australian legal experts who will discuss key animal protection issues ahead of the upcoming federal election, including live animal exports, the commercial killing of kangaroos and the need for an Independent Office of Animal Welfare.

"For as long as I can remember, I had a great love and admiration towards nature and animals and wanted to protect them," Thieme said.

"I was raised at the Veluwe, a beautiful part of Holland but also an area with a lot of factory farms. I have always asked myself why we confine these animals in small, dark cages and stalls. Also the animal transportation really made me sad.

"Then, when I was 11 years old, I saw a seal hunt on television: so I became a member of the Dutch animal protection society."

Thieme studied law at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

"To my great disappointment, my law course devoted precious little attention to the issue of animal rights," she said. "They hardly play a role in Dutch legislation.

"In 1995, during my studies, I saw a TV-documentary about the Dutch cow: What the cow wants. A researcher showed a cow with a silicon lid on the outside of one of her stomachs. It was possible to lift the lid any time to check what the cow had eaten and how her digestion was progressing.

"One used this information to adjust the animal's diet to get more milk or meat. I realised then that animals were treated as objects and that I as a consumer did not want to be part of that. I became a vegetarian."

After graduating in 1998, she went to work for a governmental advice bureau in The Hague.

In her leisure time, she worked as a volunteer for the Dierenbescherming (the Dutch Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).

She decided to make a career in animal protection, and subsequently became a policy adviser for Bont voor Dieren, a foundation committed to protecting animals that are victims of the fur industry.

"Animal rights has long been a side dish for the few traditional Dutch politicians who, according to their parties' manifestoes, were willing to defend it," she said.

"But it is a key issue for those politicians who believe that animal welfare is high-priced nonsense.

"When former prime minister Jan Pieter Balkenende came to power in 2002, the farmers' representatives of his coalition parties were keen to reverse all animal welfare measures from the past 20 years as swiftly as possible.

"Animals became objects once again, which were only intended to serve the appetite and the economic purposes of people.

"This is why I and three others hatched a plan to set up the Party for the Animals in late 2002. It was a party that would initially serve to remind the parliamentary parties about their good intentions.

"It immediately became evident that our strategy worked when we participated in the elections of 2003.

"Overnight, other so-called green parties adopted animal welfare as an issue in their election programs and communications.

"Many other parties jumped on the bandwagon as a result of our role as a 'pace rabbit in the marathon', because they realised that animal welfare was becoming an increasingly important issue for the electorate."

In 2004, Thieme became director of Wakker Dier, an organisation that fights for the abolition of factory farming.

"Since our breakthrough in 2006, we have been working our butts off in parliament.

"Our tools vary, from participating in debates with secretaries of government departments, to asking parliamentary questions, to proposing measures through petitions the parliament votes on.

"We push bigger political parties to start being more animal-friendly: for example our two socialistic parties started an initiative to ban fur farms in our country in 2006 and got the majority of the votes. Since last January, there is a ban on fur farms.

"At this moment we have 18 seats in regional parliaments, a seat in 12 cities, 15 seats in parliaments for water management, two seats in the National Parliament, two seats in the Senate and one seat in the European Parliament.

"It is possible for us to grow, because, according to the polls, 12 per cent of voters are considering voting for us.

"Research shows that since our party has been in parliament, the public is more willing to call the police when they notice animal abuse.

"Also research shows that for the last five years, there was a significant drop of meat consumption: only 25 per cent of the people in our country eat meat every day."

Elise Burgess, Voiceless' head of communications, said, "Over the years, the Voiceless Animal Law Lecture Series has shone a legal spotlight on the very latest issues facing animal protection and the wider community.

"Past series have explored ag-gag legislation and the groundbreaking work of the Nonhuman Rights Project.

"Given this is a federal election year, we think this will be a very exciting lecture series. We are already over capacity at a number of venues.

"This year should prove to be a precursor for the future of animal politics in Australia."

The lectures start at the University of Sydney on Wednesday, then on to the offices of Baker & McKenzie, Sydney, on Thursday.