She believes in Government ownership of essential services, which include banking, airlines, telecommunications, health and education,[9] and other areas privatised in the last two decades in Australia.

For six months, every day that the Australian Senate sat, she filed a motion to bring David Hicks back to Australia.

[12] When United States President George W. Bush visited Canberra on 23 October 2003, Nettle and Brown took their opposition to the war in Iraq to the point of interjecting during his address to a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament.

They wore signs referring to David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, two Australian citizens who were then being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following their apprehension by United States forces in either (this is disputed) Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Bush accepted the interjections with good humour, but the Speaker of the House, Neil Andrew, formally "named" Nettle and Brown and they were suspended from the Parliament for 24 hours.