By Eric Martin and Anthony Barich
As recently as December 2019, John Barich was driving an hour round trip to take his youngest grandson to school twice a week, then continue on to his National Civic Council office to maintain the late Bob Santamaria’s work of promoting Judeo-Christian values in Australia’s political life.
In all likelihood, the then-undiagnosed cancer that would claim his life just three months later on 4 March 2020, was already present, but such was his commitment to “faith, family and the future of Australia,” as his eldest son Adrian explained, were John’s priorities, at his March 11 funeral at Claremont Catholic church.
For more than 50 years, John Robert Barich, 81, was an integral part of key groups that sought to uphold these values, including the Knights of the Southern Cross, the Australian Family Association, the National Civic Council, the Third Order of St Francis, the WA Curriculum Society, the Parents and Friends Federation and the WA Family and Children’s Advisory Council.
While at university, he became a leading member of the Newman Society and the Tertiary Catholic Federation and joined the DLP (Democratic Labour Party) Club, formed after the Labor “split”.
It was perhaps a sign of just how close he was in heart and spirit to the NCC’s work, erstwhile called “The Movement”, that he was at Santamaria’s deathbed holding his hand.
Peter Westmore, a long-time friend of John’s, who succeeded Santamaria in leading the NCC, said in his obituary published in the group’s Newsweekly Magazine, that it is certain that John’s public involvement with the DLP in Canberra, and as first national president of the Right to Life Association, hurt his career.
“But John never complained,” Mr Westmore said.
John was also the co-founder of Life in Abundance Inc – publisher of pro-life journal Abundant Life, with others including then-Archbishop Barry Hickey and Brian Peachey, another DLP stalwart and John’s best man when he married Dawn Scarlett in Perth in 1962.
Yet those groups were largely extra-curricular for John, who spent 26 years in the public service in Canberra working under seven prime ministers before returning to Perth in 1987. Having moved west, he led the local branches of the NCC and affiliated Australian Family Association full time.
Increasing grandparent duties prompted him to pull back to part time at the NCC, but he was still in there every day, right up until he was hospitalised with cancer earlier this year.
“He was a man who had the courage of his convictions, an unshakeable faith. He could not be compromised and service, duty and the Catholic Church were the truths he lived by – and we loved him,” Adrian recalled.
John Barich was born on 11 May 1938, less than a kilometre from St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, eventually leaving war-torn Europe to emigrate to Australia aged 12 following 12 months in post-war refugee camps in Italy and Germany.
Upon arrival in Western Australia, John was sent by rail to an army camp accommodation in Northam before attending high school at Christian Brothers College in Leederville – now called Aranmore Catholic College – graduating in 1956 as a Prefect.
His public service career started with a temporary post with the Department of Health before a permanent position with the Department of the Army, before transferring to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, complimenting his Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of WA.
By 1963, he had become Assistant Director General, before taking a job with SEATO – the South East Asian Treaty Organisation – posted in Bangkok, Thailand where his second son Justin was born.
His other three children – Adrian, Felicity and Anthony – were born in Canberra.
Yet, as Adrian explained, all that pales into insignificance to meeting the love of his life, Dawn Scarlett, announcing to her family when she was still only in Fourth Form that he was going to marry her.
It was with a sombre but thankful spirit that all John’s children were present for the celebration of their 58th wedding anniversary, while John was in palliative care at Hollywood Hospital – the same day as his second son Justin’s 50th birthday.
Speaking to The Record, Anthony Barich explained that it was his father-in-law, Deacon Trevor Lyra, who assisted Archbishop Emeritus Barry Hickey at John’s Requiem Mass, who revealed in his eulogy that John wanted to tell his four children and 12 grandchildren at the anniversary celebration that the one thing he desired for them was to meet in heaven.
“John was a stalwart on many social issues and he fought fiercely in defense of marriage, the family and the pro-life cause.
“He worked hard to combat the ills caused by the illicit drug trade, and the harm caused to women and families through prostitution,” Deacon Lyra said.
In closing his eulogy, Adrian, summarised his father’s life, para-phrasing the words of St Paul.
“Rest in peace dad. You’ve done your bit – to para-phrase St Paul: ‘You fought the good fight, you finished the race, you kept the faith’.”