Page 53 - Port Douglas Magazine 26

MAN ON

AMISSION

WORDS by Roy Weavers

There are now, surely, very few people across this nation who don’t know the name
Warren Entsch, Federal member of parliament for the huge electorate of Leichhardt
in Far North Queensland and Australia’s champion of marriage equality.

here are now, surely, very few people across this nation has experienced, ‘real work,’ with all its ups and downs. Subsequently
who don’t know the name Warren Entsch, LNP Federal he has honed his skills and his bravery to ensure that his mission to
Member of Parliament for the huge electorate of champion fairness remains consistent and unwavering.
TLeichhardt in Far North Queensland. In June this year
Entsch was first elected to the Australian House of Representatives
I was privileged to have coffee with him at the Pullman Sea Temple in March 1996. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister
Resort to chat about his life, his achievements and his future plans.
for Industry, Science and Resources 1998–2001 and Parliamentary
It’s always a pleasure to ask a guest a question and then sit back for
Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources from
the next two hours while they give you their life story, their views
2001 to 2006 giving him enormous experience and an insight to
and their ambitions in a succinct and erudite way. And that was my
the “inside politics” and the parliamentary procedures at the highest
joy with the Honourable Warren Entsch MP. level. He left politics in 2007, as he had promised his son he would
His name is now synonymous with what he once thought were do, to spend more time with him when he became a teenager, as he
just local issues for Australia such as prevention of tuberculosis, always referred to the teenage years as ‘dad’s time’.. After his son
decriminalisation of medical marijuana and, of course, the same sex qualified for university he urged his father to return to politics to
marriage bill. All of these issues, much to his huge amazement, have finish the policy challenges he knew meant so much to him. He was
brought him a global reputation for championing fairness, no matter subsequently re-elected to parliament at the August 2010 election
how difficult or controversial they may initially appear. and was appointed Chief Opposition Whip by then-opposition
leader Tony Abbott.
Entsch was born in Babinda, Queensland. He has a younger brother
and two sisters and has been married to, as he describes her, his Warren’s mother contracted tuberculosis in the early 1960’s and
beautiful wife Yolonde for five years. Prior to entering politics in he explains emotionally that, although he was old enough to visit
1996 he served in the Royal Australian Air Force (1969–78). He was his mother, his younger siblings were not and the effect of that was
a maintenance fitter and welder, a real estate agent, crocodile hunter catastrophic for the family. From that time he determined that this
and still is a farmer and grazier in the Tablelands. One might say it is was something other families should never have to go through and
an unusual resume for a lead in to politics but one can certainly see he has successfully championed the government-backed prevention of

PORT DOUGLAS MAGAZINE 53