senator Paul Scarr Contact information

Paul Martin Scarr is an Australian politician and lawyer who was born on 20 August 1969 in Sydney, Australia. He is a member of the Liberal National Party of Queensland and currently serves as a Senator for Queensland in the Australian federal parliament.

Scarr moved to Queensland with his family when he was seven years old and attended Ipswich Grammar School. He went on to study at the University of Queensland where he earned a Bachelor of Laws (Hons.) and a Bachelor of Commerce degree.

Scarr began his legal career at Allens in Brisbane, where he served his articles of clerkship before joining the firm as a solicitor in 1994. He then worked as a senior associate with the firm’s Papua New Guinea division from 1999 to 2001. After returning to Australia, Scarr joined King & Wood Mallesons in 2005. He later became the general counsel and company secretary of PanAust Limited, an Australian company with mining operations in Laos.

Scarr joined the Liberal Party in 1987 and was involved in the Young Liberals. He served as the chairman of the party’s Hawken Drive (St Lucia) branch from 1997 to 1999. Following the formation of the Liberal National Party of Queensland, he served on the electorate councils for the state seats of Indooroopilly and Miller, as well as the federal seat of Moreton.

In July 2018, Scarr won LNP preselection as the lead candidate on the party’s Senate ticket in Queensland, displacing incumbent senators Ian Macdonald and Barry O’Sullivan. He was elected to a six-year term beginning on 1 July 2019 at the 2019 federal election. Since then, he has served on various Senate committees, including as chair of the economics references and the legal and constitutional affairs references committees. In July 2022, following the Coalition’s defeat at the 2022 federal election, Scarr was appointed as a deputy opposition whip.

Scarr has been identified by the Sydney Morning Herald as a member of the Centre-Right faction of the Liberal Party since March 2021.