From The Australian:
Malcolm Turnbull admitted today the government is “fighting to hold” Bennelong ahead of this weekend’s crucial by-election.
“We’re focused on winning but the polls are very tight. We are fighting to hold that seat,” the prime minister said, before joining Liberal candidate John Alexander for another media event in the electorate.
Mr Turnbull said Labor’s claim that the government has been using “China-phobic” rhetoric is “desperate and absurd”, citing his own family links through his Chinese daughter-in-law.
The Prime Minister’s defence comes after Australia’s first Chinese-born parliamentarian, Helen Sham-Ho, said she believed the Liberal Party could suffer in the Bennelong by-election on Saturday as a result of the government’s “anti-Chinese” rhetoric over the Sam Dastyari donations scandal.
Mr Turnbull said it was impossible to imagine modern Australia without its one million Australians of Chinese ancestry.
And Sinofax:
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten praised Senator Dastyari as a decent man and loyal Australian but said he had shown “very poor judgement” and demanded the government move on from the issue.
Standing next to Ms Keneally in Bennelong, Mr Shorten said the government needed to “use this opportunity to drop their China-phobic attacks and get on the issues affecting everyday Australians”.
“People in the Chinese community are alive to the fact that this sort of stuff appeals to an element of the Prime Minister’s conservative base, who he needs to keep happy, but they don’t like it at all,” one Labor insider said.
As the clear focus of the government’s efforts to tackle foreign interference, Beijing has reacted angrily to some of the Turnbull government’s language and Australian media coverage.
It has indeed and it’s rhetoric is quite similar to Labor’s:
Beijing has accused the Australian media of “paranoid” and “racist” reporting on China, amid growing concerns in Australia over Chinese interference.
“[We] suggest the Australian government and the media that they should uphold the principle of truth from facts and reject political prejudices and paranoia when handling relations with China,” according to an op-ed in the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, on Monday.
It added Australia’s current reporting and “racial paranoia tarnished Australia’s image as a multicultural society”.
Let’s make clear that I really don’t give a hoot where Aussies come from. They’re all diggers to me. And we most definitely cannot say that all Chinese-origin Aussies have any kind allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party, though some will, even though Beijing explicitly claims the Chinese diaspora as its own.
But you can’t entirely say that Beijing is an impartial observer here, either, nor that it is not having an impact. Presumably Labor’s message is being crafted by polling of local views.
Anyway, whatever the result, the recent Dastayari Affair has made it tougher for such influence to play out in future elections. More reform will ensure it:
- close Beijing Bob’s Huang Dynasty think tank;
- halve immigration to a still very generous 100k per annum;
- install a code of conduct for academic freedom and cut foreign student visa numbers;
- police foreign buying of property properly;
- seek balance in all foreign relations including working harder to engage the US in Asia and creating concerts of like-minded powers;
- security screen all potential MPs and publish the results, and
- allow China to buy whatever natural resources assets it likes so long as competition is not threatened.
If we’re going to have golden harmony then let’s do it in ways that protect our freedom.
