Warwick Raymond Parer, AM was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Queensland from 1984 to 2000. He was a member of the Liberal Party and served as Minister for Resources and Energy in the Howard Government from 1996 to 1998.
Early Life
Warwick Parer, entrepreneur, businessman and politician, was born in Wau, Papua New Guinea on 6 April 1936, son of Kevin Parer and his wife Annie (Nance), née McGahan. The Parers were pioneers of the timber, mining and aviation industries in New Guinea, where Kevin founded an airline, Parer’s Air Transport. Kevin Parer was reported to have been the first Australian to die at the hands of the Japanese in New Guinea in the Second World War, when Japanese aircraft strafed his plane as he attempted to take off from the Salamaua runway. Warwick was nearly six and his heavily pregnant mother told him, unforgettably: ‘You are now the man of the family’. Their New Guinea assets razed in the scorched earth policy used by the Australian Army to frustrate the advancing Japanese, the widow and her three children fled to Warwick in southern Queensland where they had many relatives, and where a fourth child was born. Warwick inherited a strong Catholic faith from both sides of his family, which was developed by Catholic primary schooling. In 1948, after a prolonged battle, his mother was compensated for the destruction of their property in the war. This enabled the family to move to Brisbane where Warwick completed his primary education at St Joachim’s in Holland Park. For his secondary education he boarded at a leading Catholic school, Nudgee College. He was an ordinary scholar but an enthusiastic and competent sportsman, especially in swimming, athletics and rugby union; he made life-long friends and was a prefect in his final year.
Parer studied medicine for three years at the University of Queensland, but was more committed to extra-curricular activities and his courtship of Kathleen (Kathi) Martin, a physical education student. He failed his course and in 1956 moved to Melbourne to work for his uncles, proprietors of Stanford X-Ray Co. Pty, a manufacturer of x-ray machines. He continued to court Kathi by mail and they were married in Brisbane in St Agatha’s Catholic Church, Clayfield, on 11 July 1959. Over the next twelve years, the couple had four daughters followed by three sons. With only a meagre salary from Stanford X-Ray, Warwick set about improving his prospects. He returned to tertiary study as an evening student at the University of Melbourne and completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree. He subsequently qualified as a certified practising accountant, auditor and company secretary.
Career
Personal
References and links
- Interview with Parliamentary Library