Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I only met Tsebin Tchen once, but he left a profoundly positive impression upon me. I had remembered the significance of his election at the time, especially at a time when there were people in my home state of Queensland who were putting quite poisonous ideas into the political realm. His election was of great significance.

I had the privilege of spending an afternoon with him, on 30 March 2019, at the commemoration of the memorial to the Amoy shepherds. I draw the Senate's attention to the fact that Mr Graham Perrett, the member for Moreton, also happens to be my local member. We may be in different parties, but, in matters such as this, we're absolutely on the same page. He had brought to people's attention the issue of the Amoy shepherds in St George in the Balonne region of western Queensland. In 1848, when a region in China was suffering from great famine, shepherds were brought out from China as indentured labour on five-year contracts to work in Queensland. Three hundred shepherds came to Queensland and went west to the St George region to act as shepherds for 450,000 head of sheep. In 1906 the records—their names—were destroyed in a fire at a shire council hall. In the early 1970s the cemetery, which was predominantly wooden gravesites, was destroyed by fire. This came to the member for Moreton's attention, and he thought that the issue needed to be rectified. He was right in thinking that. So the St George Chinese Community Memorial Committee was established to establish a memorial to the Amoy shepherds. It was led by some great Queenslanders and was headed up by a good friend of both of ours, Mr Jack Sun. And with the support of David Littleproud, the member for Maranoa, the memorial was built to the Amoy shepherds.

So it came to 30 March 2019 for the commemoration of the memorial. It took 6½ hours for me to drive from Brisbane to St George for the commemoration. The member for Moreton was there as well. Tchen drove 14 hours over night from Melbourne to attend the commemoration—14 hours overnight from Melbourne; that is what the significance of that commemoration meant to him. As is probably the tradition amongst lost travellers, we both found ourselves at the St George service station seeking directions to find the St George cemetery, because we were both a little bit early. We looked at each other and immediately recognised our mutual interests and values and said, 'We must be going to the same place,'—which, in fact, we were. So, before the main group arrived, we attended the cemetery, just the two of us, and discussed the memorial. We had two hours prior to the ceremony where we could sit down together.

Can I tell you, Mr President, as someone who at that stage was seeking election to this place, it was a great and deep honour to have that opportunity to sit down with Tsebin Tchen and to receive his wisdom, his guidance and his thoughts about the significance of the role I was about to undertake.

After that discussion, we returned to the cemetery for the commemoration. I want to read to you the words on that memorial, because I think they are significant, especially considering the background of Tsebin Tchen and how he came to this country from China. The memorial states:

In memoriam

To the young men who, around 1850, left the famine in Amoy to become indentured shepherds and those who, in the 1880s, drifted here in itinerant "coolie" gangs after the Palmer River gold had gone.

These sojourners never earned enough to return to the families left behind in their ancestral villages.

Here now they lie silent witness to the settlement history of this region.

There's also a poem on the memorial, a 1,300-year-old poem, from Li Bai. It says this:

The moonlight shines bright beyond my bed

I wonder if there's frost on the ground outside

I raise my head to see the moon

I lay down my head and yearn for my ancestral village.

After the ceremony, Tsebin had to return to Melbourne. He had a long trip ahead of him. But it was an absolute honour, a privilege, to share that time and those moments with him.

In his maiden speech he said this:

As we enter the 21st century, the world we are in is, in many respects, a place of even greater uncertainty. In this world, Australia, with the advantage of our geography and our history, has the chance to become a source of hope and an example for all to follow. We have a responsibility to make multiculturalism—that means an equal right and opportunity for every citizen to contribute to the growth and development of our common community—work for Australia and contribute to world peace and prosperity.

Those were Tsebin Tchen's values. Those are my values. Those are the member for Moreton's values. And those are the values of both the Leader of the Government in the Senate and, I'm sure, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate. His final words in that maiden speech were these—and you can understand the significance of these words in the context of his attending that commemoration and contemplating the plight of the Amoy shepherds, because he himself had come from China. He said in his maiden speech:

I say to my father: when I left home you told me, 'You are going to a new country to live among strangers. Always remember who you are and where you came from; always behave in such a way that those who knew you will not be disgraced because the new people that you live with will judge them by you. You should always realise where you are going and who you can be. Always strive for purpose, so that the expectation of those among whom you will live shall not be disappointed, because they will be judged by your success or not.'

His final words in that maiden speech were:

Father, I hope that I have met your wishes.

I'm sure Tsebin Tchen exceeded the wishes of his father and family. He has done himself, he has done his father, he has done his family, he has done his country and he has done this Senate great honour.