Alister is the Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services in the NSW Government and has been the Member for Ku-ring-gai in the NSW Parliament since 2015.
He was born, raised and schooled in Newcastle NSW. Alister’s father immigrated to Australia from the Netherlands in 1951 while his mother was born and raised in Australia and completed her secondary education in Ku-ring-gai.
Alister has degrees in Economics and Law from the University of Sydney and a Master of Laws degree from the University of Toronto, Canada, where he studied under a Rotary Foundation Scholarship.
After completing his studies, Alister was a lawyer for 27 years, first as a solicitor and then as a barrister, being appointed as a Senior Counsel in 2011. As a barrister, he worked principally in the areas of general commercial, insolvency, banking, defamation, and building and construction law.