Via Domainfax:
Disgraced NSW MP Daryl Maguire accepted assisted travel to China from the same businessman who was allegedly pressured by Chinese intelligence agencies to cultivate Labor MPs Eric and Joel Fitzgibbon during an earlier all-expenses paid trip.
Mr Maguire flew to China for 11 days in August 2002 with financial assistance from ACA Capital Investments, his parliamentary disclosures show.
He had dealings with ACA Capital’s sole director Humphrey Xu for the next decade, culminating in a failed bid by ACA Investments to build a $400 million international trade centre in his Liberal electorate of Wagga Wagga.
Humphrey Xu, 58, is the former boyfriend and business partner of Helen Liu. Ms Liu’s personal friendship with then defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon made headlines in 2009 when Fairfax Media reported allegations that Ms Liu was suspected of having links to Chinese military intelligence.
…In June 2013, Wagga Wagga council approved the sale of land to ACA Capital, shortly after Mr Xu had visited the rural town to inspect the site in Mr Maguire’s electorate. Mr Maguire was on the Wagga Wagga council taskforce to establish the international trade centre, and was reported by the local newspaper to be its “driving force”.
But the deal had collapsed by October, with a council report citing community concern over “lack of transparency”.
Serial offender. Just piss off, mate.
Meanwhile, fat carrots are sucking in others, at The Australian:
A political staffer who was at the heart of Tony Abbott’s government has been hired as a lobbyist by Chinese telco Huawei, as the company tries to navigate security concerns over its involvement in Australia’s 5G mobile network.
Abbott’s former cabinet secretary, Matt Stafford — now the Hong Kong-based Asia-Pacific CEO of global communications giant Burson Cohn & Wolfe — has signed on as Huawei’s lobbyist in Canberra.
Stafford will work alongside Huawei Australia’s chairman John Lord — a veteran of the Royal Australian Navy — and Lord’s fellow Australian directors, which include former Victorian Labor premier John Brumby and former Aurizon CEO Lance Hockridge.
The wrangling over the Chinese telco’s involvement in the 5G rollout Down Under is a reputational issue of some importance for what is now the world’s biggest seller of telecommunications equipment and third-biggest seller of mobile handsets.
Not for the first time I find myself wishing that the Cosmos had come with a built-in self-administering justice function that applied an appropriate shock to the testes of the unsound.
