Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

In politics, as in life, you never forget those who showed you kindness or, indeed, forbearance when you were young or when you were vulnerable. That is why I will never forget Warwick Parer. Warwick helped me when I was vulnerable: when I first came into the Liberal Party, before my first preselection, when we went campaigning in 1998 and when I first had the great privilege of entering this place. He even had to perform that noble but embarrassing role of ringing me up before my first party room meeting and saying, 'Now, Brett, I better walk down with you, because you might sit on the wrong seat.' He even performed that for me.

Warwick Parer was a gentleman. He was calm, he was loyal, he was decent and he was a man of quiet but significant faith. Yes, he was pretty conservative. That is true. But he did not believe the world was flat either. He had seven children; I suspect that changed his perspective.

He was also something of a straight arrow. I remember campaigning with him in 1998, driving all around Queensland, and he was talking to me about establishing Liberal Party branches on the coast of Queensland. He went into some detail about it and said, 'Of course, Cairns was a bit of a disappointment.' I said, 'Why was that, Warwick?' He said, 'Brett, I started the Cairns branch up but then the swingers got involved.' I went, 'What do you mean, Warwick, "the swingers got involved?'' He said, 'You know, Brett, the people that throw-the-keys-in-the-fruit-bowl-type of swingers. It wrecked the whole branch.' Anyway, it sparked my interest a little bit. He looked at me and said, 'It's disgraceful.' I have to say, he changed the subject and never spoke about the swingers in Cairns ever again. He was a straight arrow and a man who believed very much in commitment. He was a man whose conservative values I always respected.

He was unusual. He would be quiet and he would puff on his pipe. He often did not say much. To me he often seemed more like a gentleman farmer than a politician. I used to say to him, 'Warwick, I think Kathi, your wife, is a more natural politician than you are.' Of course, Warwick agreed. He said that politics did not come easy to him, but he believed he had to do it. It was more—as Senator Boswell, Senator Brandis and Senator Macdonald said—a matter of duty than of performance for him.

Just last year, Warwick published a memoir called Mine. He said, 'All of my life experiences have been interesting and they have been rewarding. But undoubtedly the greatest achievement of my life has been to have a family of confident and talented children, who have each found their own unique strengths and worked to develop those attributes in their own life journeys—seven great Australians.' He later on said, 'If a person does not strive to make this world a better place than when he or she entered it, then that person need not have lived.'

Warwick Parer strove to make a better country. He did that. And I will always be grateful because he helped me when I needed it.