Clarrie Millar

Percival Clarence Millar AM (né Turbill; 15 June 1925 – 28 November 2017)^[1] was an Australian politician. He was a member of the National Party and served in the House of Representatives from 1974 to 1990, representing the Queensland seat of Wide Bay. Prior to entering politics he was a public servant, soldier and farmer.

Millar was born on 15 June 1925 in Norwood, South Australia, the son of Elsie (née Klaebe) and Percival John Turbill. His father, a clerk, salesman and tram driver, died of tuberculosis in 1935. His mother subsequently married William Donald Millar and he was given his stepfather's surname.^[2]

As a child, Millar's family "followed an itinerant life across Victoria and Tasmania" in the aftermath of the Great Depression. He left school at the age of thirteen, by which time the family had settled in Hobart. As a teenager he worked as an assayer at the Rosebery zinc mines and as a salesman in a Hobart department store, before joining the Postmaster-General's Department in 1940. He worked for the department as a messenger boy, post office assistant, and junior assistant telegrapher.^[2]

Millar enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1943, at the age of 18. He joined the Central Bureau as a radio operator conducting signals intelligence. He was initially stationed in Brisbane and later in the Northern Territory, where he intercepted the Japanese message of surrender in 1945. He was discharged from the RAAF in 1946 with the rank of leading aircraftman.^[2]

After being discharged from the RAAF, Millar re-joined the Postmaster-General's Department in the telegraph section of the General Post Office in Sydney. He transferred to the Department of Immigration in 1948, then in 1950 left the public service and moved to Biloela, Queensland, where he operated a dairy farm alongside his brother and stepfather. The farm experienced financial difficulties and after five years Millar moved to Brisbane where he found work as a real estate agent. He subsequently returned to dairy farming at Kilkivan. He became "an innovative farmer, practising soil conservation and strip grazing, and improving his herd by artificial insemination", and also obtaining a pilot's licence.^[2]

Millar was elected chairman of the Country Party's Kilkivan branch in 1974, having previously held office in state and federal electorate councils. He was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1974 federal election, defeating incumbent Australian Labor Party (ALP) MP Brendan Hansen in the seat of Wide Bay.^[2]

Millar served as chairman of committees from 1978 to 1983.^[3]

He retired in 1990. Together with Labor's Tom Uren, Millar was the last World War II combat veteran to serve in the House, though Russ Gorman who was a non-combat WWII veteran would serve until 1996.^[4] He was the father of ABC journalist Lisa Millar.^[5]