From cop to dolphin trainer to MP – and why Sam Lim thinks Gough Whitlam is God

New West Australian Labor MP Sam Lim is likely parliament’s most multilingual member, but the language he learned as a dolphin trainer could be the most intuitive when wading into political life.

“If you jump in with an angry mind, [they’re] gone. None of them come closer to you. They can feel you. We use that rapport, that relationship,” Lim said on Tuesday. “Actually, they train us, not we train them.”

New Labor Member for Tangney Sam Lim has previously been a policeman and dolphin trainer.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, supplied

Labor MPs gathered in Parliament House on Tuesday morning to meet as a caucus and celebrate the election of 16 new lower house members.

Lim shot to notoriety after defeating Scott Morrison’s right-hand man, Ben Morton, in the WA seat of Tangney because of his novel past career as a dolphin trainer, but he more recently worked as a decorated police officer, a role he entered the year after coming to Australia from Malaysia in 2005.

But the 61-year-old was at pains to make clear his “whole life journey is important”, while his political trajectory can be traced back to one man: Gough Whitlam.

“He was the prime minister of Australia who removed the White Australia policy, and because of that, we ... a multicultural community, can come to Australia and live, and call Australia home,” Lim said.

“I respect him, he’s like my god to me.”

Australia’s ethnic diversity has never been better reflected politically than in the 47th Parliament with the number of representatives with Asian backgrounds doubling, and three new First Nations MPs bringing the number of Indigenous parliamentarians to an all-time high of 10.

The cultural shift wasn’t lost on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in his address to longtime colleagues and new recruits, who vowed to use that momentum to oversee major parliamentary reform.

“We will show that we’re an inclusive and mature country by recognising the privilege that we have of sharing this great island continent of ours, this great multicultural nation, with the oldest continuous civilisation on the planet, and recognising that in our constitution with an enshrined Voice to Parliament,” Albanese said.

Lim, of Chinese-Malay heritage, was born in Johor, Malaysia, in a house “where the roof was always leaking”.

“When it rained, because we didn’t have a concrete floor ... the floor was slippery and muddy. My school shoes would become dark, instead of white, and there’s no water, no power,” he said.

Lim worked for two years as a constable with the Malaysian police force, then worked as a dolphin trainer for 4½ years before the safari park where he worked was liquidated by the bank. He then went on to run several small businesses in Malaysia and Australia. Lim can speak 10 languages, including Mandarin, Indonesian, Malay and several dialects.

He decided to join the West Australian police force at 45, a job that took him to the town of Eucla, on WA’s coastal border with South Australia. “Eucla is out there in the middle of nowhere, and I loved it,” he said. “I explored the whole of Western Australia in a police capacity.”

Despite the celebrity of his political ascension, Lim insisted he was a “low-profile person”, a quality that placed him at odds with his predecessor’s opulent electoral office.

“I like to have community come to me. That building is very high-profile,” he said. “It’s a big, huge, white palace, and [it has] a very, very, unfriendly feeling ... so, if I can, I’ll move out from that building. I don’t like that building.”

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