On 11 August 2026, I informed the Senate of the death, on 5 June 2026, of the Hon. and Reverend Professor Michael Carter Tate AO, a former minister and senator for the state of Tasmania from 1978 to 1993. I draw to the attention of honourable senators the presence in the chamber of the family and guests of former senator Michael Tate. On behalf of all senators, I offer my condolences and welcome you to the Senate.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its sadness at the death, on 5 June 2026, of the Reverend the Honourable Professor Michael Carter Tate AO, former Special Minister of State and Minister for Justice and Consumer Affairs, and former senator for Tasmania, places on record its gratitude for his service to the Parliament and the nation, and tenders its sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

I want to pay my personal respects to the honourable Michael Tate AO and extend my condolences to his family, his friends and his parishioners. That includes his brother Richard, his sister-in-law, Helen, Monica and some other friends of Mr Tate. I welcome you here today for this particular commemoration of Michael's life.

Michael Tate lived an extraordinary life of service. His deep commitment to his community was apparent in his contributions as an academic, as a senator for Tasmania, as a minister under the Hawke and Keating governments, as a diplomat and, perhaps most importantly from my point of view, as a Catholic priest. Michael served in this chamber for 15 years. He brought to the Senate a formidable intellect, a lawyer's precision and a willingness to engage seriously with difficult questions. He was never afraid to take principled positions, and, throughout his parliamentary career, he displayed an independence of mind that earned respect across party lines.

As Minister for Justice in the Hawke and Keating governments, Michael helped shaped important reforms in Australia's legal and justice systems. He played a key role in establishing the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. He led efforts to strengthen Australia's response to organised crime and money laundering, and, following the Hoddle Street and Queen Street shootings, he initiated a national review of gun control laws. He approached those responsibilities with determination and seriousness because he believed government had an obligation to protect both justice and human dignity.

But, for all those achievements in politics, it's perhaps his later vocation that revealed most clearly the person that he was. After service as Australia's ambassador to the Holy See and to the Netherlands—interestingly, not Ireland but the Netherlands—and after receiving one of the nation's highest honours as an Officer of the Order of Australia, Michael walked away from public office to answer a calling that had been with him for much of his life. He entered the priesthood, describing it as 'an early vocation, long deferred'.

Ordained in the year 2000, Father Michael Tate devoted himself to pastoral service in Tasmania. He became a trusted spiritual guide, a teacher and a pastor. Those who knew him in those years have spoken not simply of his intellect but of his generosity, his compassion and his genuine concern for ordinary people. Following his passing, Archbishop Tony Ireland described him as 'one of a kind, gifted intellectually, a powerful communicator and an extraordinarily generous pastor who loved his people'. Others remembered his kindness, his integrity and his determination to stand with those who felt forgotten or overlooked.

What stands out about Michael's life is that, whatever role he occupied, he approached it wholeheartedly. He believed deeply in public service, he believed in conscience, he believed in justice, and he believed that life carried responsibilities beyond just personal success. On a personal note, I was hosting Father Tate in Adelaide the day I was informed that my own father had passed away in March 1993. Today, as we remember Michael Tate, we honour not only a former senator and minister but a man of faith, conviction and service. May he rest in peace.

I rise on behalf of the coalition to pay tribute to the Reverend Michael Carter Tate AO, a former senator for Tasmania, Minister for Justice, ambassador and Catholic priest, who passed away in Hobart on 5 June this year aged 80. I too acknowledge the members of his family and friends who join us in the Senate gallery today. Few people have actually served our great country in so many different ways. Fewer still have left public life at its height to take up the priesthood. Michael Tate did both, and, when he died, he was still serving as the parish priest at South Hobart.

He was born in Sydney on 6 July 1945 and grew up in Hobart, where he was educated at St Virgil's College. At 18, as a first-year law student, he was seriously injured in a car accident and spent months in hospital. He later said that this gave him a second chance at life and a sense that he could not live a self-centred one.

He graduated in law from the University of Tasmania with first class honours in 1968, and then he studied theology at Oxford. He returned to lecture in constitutional law and became dean of the law faculty in 1977. That was the year he was elected to the Senate for Tasmania. He then took up his seat on 1 July 1978 and ended up serving this place for 15 years. His first speech was about conscience. He argued that the National Service Act failed to protect a person who objected to a particular war without objecting to all military service. In 1983, he introduced a private senator's bill to change that, and, in 1992, the parliament passed legislation that recognised particular conscientious beliefs. He chaired the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee and the Scrutiny of Bills Committee from 1983 to 1987. In 1984, he chaired the Senate's select committees examining the conduct of High Court justice Lionel Murphy. He reached his findings based on the evidence alongside the Liberal and democrat members, rather than his Labor colleagues, and paid a political price for it. He, though, called it a hard decision but an honest one. From 1987 to 1993, he served in the Hawke and Keating ministries as Special Minister of State and then Minister for Justice. He played a key role in establishing the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and initiated a national review of gun control laws after the Hoddle Street and Queen Street shootings. He received threats to his life and lived under police protection, and he kept doing the job.

After leaving the Senate in July 1993, he served as Australia's ambassador to the Holy See and to the Netherlands. It was at the end of that posting that his life took its most remarkable turn. When he made his farewell call on Pope John Paul II, he was asked where he would go next. He replied that he would be studying for the priesthood. When the Pope called it a 'late vocation', he corrected him: it was an early vocation, long deferred. He said the call had been nagging at him since he was a boy. A poem by WH Auden finally convinced him not to leave it any longer. The poem imagines a man reduced to tears of shame on hearing the poems he may have written. Michael Tait said he did not want to cry those tears himself.

He left the embassy residence in The Hague to study with the Dominicans at Cambridge, then in Rome and in Melbourne. He was ordained at St Mary's Cathedral in Hobart on 19 May 2000. Gough Whitlam, Bill Hayden, Lionel Bowen and John Button were all in the congregation. He joked that obedience would be his great problem and that being docile and humble did not come easily to a politician. He also said that he did not want anyone to see him as a Labor politician in a Roman collar, because he could not serve then his whole congregation. So he stayed out of public debate and gave himself wholeheartedly to his parishes. For 26 years, he served as a parish priest at Bridgewater in Brighton, Sandy Bay, Huon Valley and South Hobart. He was also a consultor to the archdiocese and, for a time, its vicar-general. He founded the way of St James pilgrimage in the Huon Valley. In 2010, he returned briefly to public office as Tasmania's first parliamentary standards commissioner.

The tributes from those who served alongside him in the church described a pastor who well and truly knew his people. A fellow priest recalled that only recently had Father Tate rung him to ask him to look in on someone who had moved into a neighbouring parish so that they would not be lost in the system. That's the type of person he was. Archbishop Tony Ireland, who gave him the last rites, described him as a faithful pastor who loved his people.

On behalf of the coalition, I extend our sympathy to his family, his friends, his former colleagues and the parishioners of South Hobart who have lost their beloved priest. May he rest in peace.

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.

They could do both.

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.

I too rise to pay tribute to the life and service of Father Michael Tate AO. I do that today on behalf of the Tasmanian Labor Senate team and, I'm sure, on behalf of those who serve in the other place, who I'm sure have reflected on the loss felt not only by Michael's family and friends—Richard and those who are here in the gallery today—but the length and breadth of Tasmania and beyond. As a Catholic, I also want to extend my condolences not only to his family but to his fellow priests, to his parishioners and to the many, many Tasmanians whose lives he touched, whether that was as a priest or as a senator representing our great state of Tasmania.

What an extraordinary life—he led a very full life, something that we commit to do, but very few of us really reach the pinnacle of what Michael Tate did. His life was shaped by faith, intellect, public duty and a steadfast commitment to the dignity of every person. His passing is a profound loss to our state, our nation, the Australian labour movement and the Catholic Church.

Michael first served the community through the law and public life. After graduating from the University of Tasmania with first-class honours in law, he lectured at the university and became the dean of the faculty of law. Elected as a Labor Senator for Tasmania in 1977, he served in the Senate from 1978 until 1993. He brought to the parliament a formidable legal mind and a strong social conscience, something that is missing in this place at this time, I believe. He had such a strong conviction that public office must always be directed towards the common good.

In government, Michael held a succession of significant responsibilities. He served as Special Minister of State, Parliamentary Secretary for Justice, Minister for Justice, Minister for Justice and Consumer Affairs, and Minister Assisting the Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs. Across the great years of the Hawke and Keating governments, he helped advance important national reforms. He played a key role in establishing the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and initiated a national review of gun control laws, work reflecting his concerns for justice, safety and accountability of government.

Michael's service continued beyond parliament. In 1994 he was appointed the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See and to the Netherlands, representing our country with intelligence, judgement and dignity. In 1996 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service. Later, in 2010, he became Tasmania's first Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. In each role, he understood that institutions earn public trust only when those within them act with honesty, humility and respect.

Yet Michael's public career was only one expression of a deeper vocation. After completing his diplomatic service, he answered the call to the priesthood. As we've heard, that was something that was with him from childhood.

I, at one time, wanted to be a nun and join the silent order. I think my colleagues would say that I was totally unsuited for that role!

He was ordained by the Archbishop, Adrian Doyle, at St Mary's Catholic Cathedral in Hobart on 19 May 2000. Over the following 26 years, he served faithfully as a parish priest at Bridgewater-Brighton, Sandy Bay, the Huon Valley and South Hobart. Within the Archdiocese of Hobart, he also served as a consultor, a member of the council of priests and, for a time, as Vicar General.

Father Michael was a very generous and very faithful pastor. He listened carefully, he spoke plainly and he never lost sight of the person before him. His ministry reached beyond church walls into homes, hospitals and moments of grief, uncertainty and celebration. He founded the Way to St James Cygnet pilgrimage, creating a tradition of faith, reflection and fellowship in the Huon Valley. Whether offering spiritual guidance, encouraging a parishioner or contributing to public debate, he combined moral clarity with genuine, honest compassion.

I was privileged to consider Michael a friend, and I valued his counsel, his warmth and his willingness to engage seriously with the difficult questions of our time. He was a person of great integrity and principled character.

His convictions were deeply held, never shallow or performative. They were tested through study, prayer and service. He could be direct, and he could be challenging, but he was also generous in spirit. You always knew that Michael's words came from conscience and from a sincere desire to serve others.

Father Michael Tate lived many lives in one: scholar, senator, minister, diplomat, priest, mentor and friend. And of course he was a brother and a son. Yet a single thread ran through them all, and that was service. He believed that faith required action, that justice demanded courage and that leadership carried an obligation to others.

I know Tasmania is richer for his contribution and poorer for his passing. I only hope that his example continues to inspire all who serve in public life and in the church, and I once again offer my heartfelt condolences to all of those who loved him. But I also want to remind people that he was still very much a human being.

I was invited down to my very first lunch with Archbishop Doyle in Hobart, and Michael was there, and I think it was probably to help build that bridge between another very young, inexperienced senator and the archbishop. It was a very enjoyable lunch until Michael said to me, 'Now, Helen, don't you love the power?' and I said, 'I'm sorry?' He said, 'Helen, the thing I miss most is the power that I had,' and I said, 'But, Father, you have more power now than any senator or minister will ever have.

He never, ever forgot where he came from. He always was there to give advice, and the thing that has continued to impress me is the time that he spent with many young Labor Catholics who at times may have lost their way and were having difficulties. He was there. He was also there to challenge them and to ensure that their beliefs were their core values that we as Catholics live by each and every day. I will miss him. I know many people who relied on his counsel will miss him. May he rest in peace. I thank him again for his service.

I rise to associate myself with comments made by colleagues across the chamber on the life and the service of the Reverend the Hon. Michael Tate AO, and I extend my condolences to his family and my thanks to them for lending him to Tasmania, Australia, the church and our communities. It was fascinating to read back through his story and how he came to his place in life, coming from a quite conservative family, a Liberal family, but finding himself on the other side of politics.

He saw the light!

Well, not all of us find our way that way, Senator Farrell, but he did. He held very strong Christian pacifist beliefs, and that didn't always sit well with his own side of politics, even. His entrance to the parliament came through first being preselected at No. 4 on the ticket and then, through the resignation of two other members of the ticket, being elevated to No. 2. Senator Farrell, you and I might understand some of those nuances. That's what brought him to this place. He was, on a number of occasions, challenged seriously by the party machine in Tasmania and supported from a federal perspective to retain his position in the place, and the work that he did in the parliament, I think, probably was part of that process.

One of the things that I appreciate about Michael Tate was his courage and his willingness to undertake those tasks that he'd been given that didn't necessarily curry favour with his own side of politics. Those are quite often the most difficult tasks that you will undertake as a member of parliament, and it's a rare—and, sadly, these days even rarer—trait that we see. He undertook some very difficult roles when you look at the allegations in two inquiries with respect to Lionel Murphy, where he made decisions that weren't supported, necessarily, by his side of politics. And then I look at his time as the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on the Human Embryo Experimentation Bill 1985, very early in the piece for those sorts of issues. But I then reflect on conversations that I had with him between 2004 and 2007, when this chamber had three significant conscience based debates with respect to stem cell research and human cloning. He didn't completely eschew politics; he took the opportunity to contact some of us who were participating in that debate and were struggling with some of the concepts that we were dealing with. But he did that in such a way that we had a strong sound, respectful, sensible communication. We didn't necessarily have to agree, but at the end of the day he was very willing to have those conversations to support those of us that were struggling ourselves with what are and were really important issues of the day.

For him to have served such a terrific life of public service, as has already been indicated, in education, in the parliament, as an ambassador and then in the clergy—it is an extraordinary life of service that he has given. We all ought to pay thanks to him and to his family for that. He served humbly, but he served with great distinction and integrity. I think that's a real mark of a man who had a really significant legal mind—the fact that he was entrusted with so many of those difficult inquiry processes but also ministerial appointments as Special Minister of State and the minister for justice, then immigration and justice again on another occasion.

As Senator Polley said, Tasmania is poorer for his passing. The nation is poorer for his passing, but we are richer for his contribution. I thank him for it, and I extend again my condolences to his family.

The Reverend the Hon. Professor Michael Tait, AO—what a truly remarkable life.

Question agreed to, honourable senators joining in a moment of silence.