Which was the one NSW seat where Labor saw a -6% swing amid a calamitous landslide against the Liberal Party?
The seat of Strathfield where Labor ran the candidate Jason Yat-sen Li. The local Chinese community comprises 20% of voters and that appears to have swung the day despite a radical swing in the opposite direction from the rest of the electorate:
…Labor frontbencher Kristina Keneally said the Strathfield results showed swings against the Liberals in booths with a large number of Chinese voters, which she claimed showed a repudiation of the Morrison government’s harsher rhetoric against Beijing.
In recent times, Yat-sen Li has made it plain where he sits in the China debate. He wants more China Downunder:
Australia’s higher education and tourism service sectors, crucial to our economy’s diversification from resources, were dealt double whammys in the 2021 budget. They were given no specific funding support and must contend with the assumption of closed borders until mid 2022.
If we lived in a fantasy world where there was no politics, there is a clear solution: we should soon open our borders in a controlled way to students and tourists from a small group of low-risk countries. Importantly, this group should include China. China’s rate of infection is close to that of Australia. It has had less outbreaks from its draconian quarantine system than Singapore and Japan. And, crucially, it is Australia’s largest source of students and tourists by a staggering margin.
…The consequences are profound and depressing: the long-term destruction of powerhouse Australian industries, relationships and trust built over decades, and devastation to Australian institutions, employees and their families.
To say that this is all necessary to defend our sovereignty is disingenuous.
This guff was printed six months after China issued its 14 conditions to end Australian democracy, and as it finalised the gutting of Hong Kong freedoms.
We must ask, has the collapse of the Chinese student trade led to Jason Yat-sen Li’s forecast of devastating outcomes? Or, has it delivered the tightest labor market in forty years? The latter.
Has Australian trade and industry been “destroyed” by diversifying away from China? Or has it smoothly shifted volumes to other markets? The latter.
Is Australia currently the global pin-up boy for suffering at the hands of a bullying China? Or is it an outstanding global model for how to resist coercive economic warfare? So much so that Chinese diplomats are now quietly groveling in Canberra and the EU is sending experts to check out how we did it? The latter.
Therefore, the question faced by the Strathfield electorate is: is Jason Yat-sen Li either a dreadful analyst or is he biased towards Chinese engagement irrespective of the costs to Australian sovereignty and democracy? This might be owing to either personal, business or political reasons.
I can’t answer that question nor, I put it to you, could the electorate of Strathfield.
Labor take note.
