Clarrie Millar

Early life 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.

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.

Millar served as chairman of committees from 1978 to 1983. As acting speaker he developed a reputation for impartiality, stemming from an adverse ruling he made against Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser in 1979, and was said to have "presided with competence, decorum, and fairness, seldom raising his voice". Millar nonetheless denied association with the Joh for Canberra movement that had prompted the split in the coalition and refused overtures to resign his seat in favour of Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Together with Labor MP 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.

Personal life In 1948, Millar married Dorothy Cooper, with whom he had five children, He died in Brisbane on 28 November 2017, aged 92.