We’ve all seen the trucks:
In my view, Labor is largely to blame for letting such innuendo develop. It misread geopolitics and local politics for years as the Australian people woke up to the dangers of China and its pre-election pivot came far too late.
That said, innuendo is one thing, facts on the ground another. And there is one electorate where the Morrison Government is virtually in bed with the CCP to win the election. The electorate of Chisolm and glorious incumbent Gladys Liu:
It’s difficult to overstate how much Labor needs the ultra-marginal seat of Chisholm to fall its way if it is to form government. In Labor circles it’s known as the 76th seat – the seat that gets them over the line in federal parliament’s 151-seat chamber.
“It’s not even a bellwether; it’s a necessary seat,” says pollster Peter Lewis, of Essential Media Communications. “If it doesn’t fall, they don’t win.”
With a wafer-thin margin of 0.6 per cent in favour of Liberal incumbent Gladys Liu, both sides are struggling to predict what will happen in the seat and are reluctant to make a call publicly. One Liberal Party elder doesn’t expect his party to hold Chisholm, pointing to a predicted statewide swing against the Coalition that would eclipse Liu’s advantage.
“We don’t know what the Chinese vote will do,” he adds, “And we can’t find out.”
A large portion of Chisholm’s voters have Chinese heritage – under the seat’s previous boundaries, 17.6 per cent of this electorate spoke either Mandarin or Cantonese at home. It was why the ferocious battle for Chisholm in 2019 included the first-ever candidate debate conducted in Mandarin, between the Liberal Liu and her Labor challenger at that time, Taiwan-born Jennifer Yang.
Liu is a CCP stooge. You can cut that up any way you like. She’s only been a member of CCP-linked groups. She’s only channeled CCP-linked monies to the LNP. She’s only doing what every Chinese national has to do to manage a prominent career that crosses CCP paths.
It doesn’t matter how you frame it. All of these things make Liu CCP-influenced and a party to CCP influence. This is why ASIO has warned the Morrison Government against her.
Until now, Liu has held the Morrison Government’s balance of power in her golden hand. Now, she has the Morrison Government throwing unaccounted millions into the electorate, to outbid Labor, so that Beijing can keep its influence in the most pivotal swing electorate of the democratic process.
In short, the CCP and Scott Morrison are collaborating to say “vote Liberal” in Chisolm.
