Warren Entsch

Warren George Entsch (born 31 May 1950) is an Australian politician currently serving as a Liberal National member of the Australian House of Representatives representing the Division of Leichhardt in Queensland. He represented Leichhardt from March 1996 to his retirement at the dissolution of parliament in October 2007 prior to the November 2007 election for the Liberal Party of Australia. He was re-elected to the seat in August 2010.^[1]

Biography

He was born in Babinda, Queensland and served in the Royal Australian Air Force 1969–78. He was a maintenance fitter and welder, real estate agent, farmer and grazier and company director before entering politics.

Entsch was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources 1998–2001 and was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources from 2001 to 2006. In September 2004 Entsch publicly spoke against his party's anti-gay-marriage stance, describing laws to prevent gay marriage as "offensive" and "unnecessary".^[2] As a result of his pro-gay statements, the Family First Party – which preferenced Liberal/National Coalition candidates ahead of Labor candidates in almost every other seat, nation-wide – directed their preferences to Labor instead of Entsch. Nevertheless, he won re-election with an increased majority of both the primary and two-party-preferred vote.

In December 2005, he pledged support for a civil union scheme after the UK began granting civil partnerships. He was interviewed for The Pink Broad (Issue 15, published Wednesday 22 February 2006), a fortnightly gay and lesbian newspaper, in which he confirmed that he planned to sponsor a private member’s bill in Federal Parliament within months that promised to eradicate discrimination and the "inequities" faced by Australia's gay and lesbian population under Federal law. He went on to say in the article, "I would think that if I was a gay activist, people would say 'Oh, just another bloody fairy out there trying to push his own agenda', but because of my background, people are a little bit puzzled by it and sitting up and listening. . . and in fact I'm getting a lot of people that are not gay coming up to me and saying to me 'Hey, you know, we've got gay friends and family too'. And this is what I've found here, in this place as well. . . mind you, there are some who are still a little bemused. They don't quite understand it."

In May 2006, he wrote to all coalition MPs asking them to support such a bill. When interviewed, he said this bill would encompass not only same-sex couples but any interdependent relationship: "You need to take the sex out of this debate. There are other emotions of interdependency that come into play – it’s not exclusive to one gender balance or another.".^[3][4] On 8 September 2010 Entsch indicated that he did not consider same-sex marriage an important issue.^[5] Entsch voted against the Australian Greens 2010 motion for members of the house to poll their constituents on the issue of same sex marriage and voted against a 2012 bill legalizing same-sex marriage that was sponsored by Stephen Jones.^[6][7]

In his time outside of Parliament between 2007 and 2010, Entsch worked as an independent Director on the board of CEC Group, and a Director of the Australian Rainforest Foundation.

On 10 November 2009, Entsch announced that he would again run for pre-selection for the seat of Leichhardt.^[8] He was re-elected to parliament on 21 August 2010 defeating the man who had succeeded him in 2007, Labor incumbent Jim Turnour. After the 2010 federal election, Warren was appointed Chief Opposition Whip by opposition leader Tony Abbott.

External links

• Warren Entsch, Federal Member for Leichhardt
• Entsh Returns to Politics
• Warren Entsch wins Leichhardt for LNP

References