CONDOLENCES

Ms COLLINS (Franklin—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) (11:54): I rise to support this condolence motion for Father Michael Tate AO, who died on 5 June this year, at the age of 80. Michael was a great Tasmanian. He was a Labor man, a senator, a minister, an ambassador and a priest.

At his funeral, his friend Jeffrey McGee said his career read like four separate lives held together by one constant: 'a life of warmth and service to others'. It was one life with one thread running through it. Michael was born in Sydney, but he was raised and educated in Hobart.

He topped his law course at the University of Tasmania in 1968 and he became the dean of the law faculty. His opposition to the Vietnam War and to conscription in particular led him to the Australian Labor Party. In 1977 he was elected to the Senate as a senator for Tasmania, where he served for 15 years.

As the Minister for Justice in the Hawke and Keating governments from 1987 to 1993, he left a lasting mark on this country. He played a key role in establishing the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, as the Prime Minister said, and he also started the national review of gun control laws. Both reforms reflected his deep sense of justice.

In 1994, he became Australia's ambassador to the Holy See and to the Hague, and he represented us with wisdom and dignity. I first had the privilege of meeting Michael when I had just joined the Labor Party as a young woman. I was working on campaigns and he was a federal minister.

For a young person starting out in politics, it meant a great deal for me to be taken so seriously by somebody of his standing. It was in 2000 when Michael answered a long calling and was ordained as a priest at St Mary's Cathedral in Hobart. He served as a parish priest in Sandy Bay, in the Huon Valley and in South Hobart and, for a time, as vicar general.

He found his way to St James, a pilgrimage in the Huon Valley inspired by El Camino de Santiago. He was a man who walked alongside the people. It was years later that our paths crossed again when Michael was doing work through CatholicCare on affordable and social housing in Tasmania and I was the Minister for Housing.

We had a conversation whereby he got me to sign something for the Prime Minister and chat to the Prime Minister, which Michael wanted to do, but he also told me how pleased he was to see a Tasmanian in the federal cabinet with serious responsibilities. We talked about the impact that he had had and about the many ways he was serving his community. What stayed with me was that he wanted to make sure others could carry on that work.

He wasn't thinking about his own legacy or what he had done, but he was thinking about who would continue his important work. That was so typical of Michael. At the funeral, Archbishop Ireland said that Michael's generosity was not trumpeted but was experienced and that many people received help from him and never spoke of it because he never did.

There are many stories in Tasmania of those families and individuals that he helped that Michael never spoke about. Father Michael Tate was a legal scholar, a parliamentarian, a diplomat and a pastor, but he was also a loyal friend, a very generous mentor and a very proud Tasmanian. His legacy is one of integrity, faith and service to others, and Tasmania is the better for it.

To his family, his friends, his parishioners and the Archdiocese of Hobart, I offer my sincere condolences. May he rest in peace.