CONDOLENCES

Senator McDONALD (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (16:04): I rise on behalf of the Nationals to join the Senate in honouring the life of the Hon. Michael Carter Tate AO, Senator for Tasmania from 1978 to 1993, who died in Hobart on 5 June 2026 at the age of 80. I extend our condolences to his family, his friends and the parishioners of South Hobart, where he was parish priest at the time of his death.

Michael Tate's life is testimony to the possibility of life after politics. I must say, on a personal note, that I find each of these times where we reflect in the Senate on those who have come before us a great reminder of the individuals, people and lives that come to serve the Australian parliament, and I must say, on reading, that Father Tate's life is an extraordinary one.

He resigned from the Senate in July 1993 at the age of 47, having come at only 33. In the years that followed, he served as Australia's ambassador to the Netherlands and to the Holy See and then, for more than a quarter of a century, as a Catholic priest in southern Tasmania. I guess we should draw some comparison between the guidance he would have provided constituents in his role as a senator and the guidance that he was able to provide as a priest in that community.

He was born, as we've already heard, in Sydney on 6 July 1945 and grew up in Hobart, where he was educated at St Virgil's College. In 1963 he won a Commonwealth scholarship and studied law at the University of Tasmania. In October of that year, at only 18, he was seriously injured in a car accident and spent five months in a neck-to-knee plaster at the Royal Hobart Hospital.

The realisation that the accident had given him a second chance at life is one that we don't all get, do we? Sometimes, those realisations come to us late in life, and it was possibly a gift that he discovered that so early. He graduated law with first-class honours in 1968, and an international Commonwealth scholarship took him to the University of Oxford, where he studied from 1968 to 1971.

He went on to continue his study of law and took up theology instead, teaching himself ancient Greek so that he could read the original sources. He was an extraordinary man and an extraordinary senator. Senator Farrell, you are fortunate to have met him and known him.

He was still undergoing operations for his injuries while he was studying in Oxford. He was awarded a Master of Arts by the University of Oxford, and media reports described him as the first lay Catholic since the Reformation to take a degree in theology at Oxford—an indication of this unusual path that he took. He said in 1987 that his interest in politics began during his studies at Oxford.

His time at Oxford had a profound impact on his life—so much so that he later created a scholarship to enable Tasmanian students to undertake advanced theological studies at Blackfriars Hall in Oxford. We should probably get to know some of those people; it would be interesting to know who Tasmania has sent in his footsteps. He returned to the University of Tasmania in 1972 to lecture in constitutional law and was appointed dean of the law faculty in 1977.

It was that next year that he took his seat in the Senate, on 1 July 1978, and from 1983 to 1987 he chaired both the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs and the scrutiny of bills committee. Between 1984 and 1985 he chaired the Senate select committees that examined the conduct of Justice Lionel Murphy of the High Court, the former Labor attorney-general.

His findings did not please many of his Labor colleagues and, by his own account, cost him dearly in the years that followed. Nevertheless, in February of 1987, he was appointed Special Minister of State and, in September of that year, Minister for Justice. He held the justice portfolio until March 1993, and for part of that time was Minister for Justice and Minister for Consumer Affairs.

As minister, he played a key role in establishing the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. He resigned from the Senate on 5 July 1993 and took up diplomatic posts. We've already heard this anecdote, but I think it's worth repeating.

Michael Tate famously recounted the story of his farewell audience with Pope John Paul II in 1996, who asked where he would be posted next. Michael replied he was going to study for the priesthood. When the Pope remarked that this was a late vocation, Father Tate replied that it was an early vocation long deferred—what a lovely story.

He studied with the Dominicans at Cambridge, at the English College in Rome and at Corpus Christi College in Melbourne. He was ordained a priest at St Mary's Cathedral in Hobart in May 2000. He served as a parish priest at Bridgewater-Brighton, at Sandy Bay, in the Huon Valley and at South Hobart and for a time as vicar general of the Archdiocese of Hobart.

He founded the Way to St James, Cygnet, an annual pilgrimage in the Huon Valley modelled on the Camino de Santiago. So, for all those Australians who head off to Italy and Spain to walk the Camino, I'm now going to promote that they could instead find the way to St James in the Huon Valley. Senator McDONALD: They could do both, Senator Farrell—what an excellent idea.

I will commit to doing Tasmania first. In 2010 he was appointed Tasmania's first parliamentary standards commissioner. Michael Tate was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1996.

Few former parliamentarians have gone on to build a second public vocation of such depth and service, and Father Tate gave 30 years to it after his parliamentary career ended. At his funeral, his friend Jeffrey McGee told mourners that in his final years Michael valued his parish in South Hobart above the Senate and above his postings abroad. On his death, the Archbishop of Hobart, Tony Ireland, described him as an extraordinarily generous and faithful pastor who loved his people.

Whether as a senator, minister, ambassador or priest, Father Michael Tate devoted his life to service. It was an uncommon journey marked by intellect, faith and commitment to others. On behalf of the Nationals, I extend our sympathy to his family and to all who mourn him.

What a life well lived—vale, the Hon. Michael Tate AO.