Inside Labor’s anti-Dutton election pitch to Chinese Australians

The federal election is yet to be announced, but Labor MPs and candidates are already spruiking for Chinese votes.

Just this Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong made an election pitch to a large number of Chinese Australians filling up the Box Hill Town Hall in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. A few dozen protesters gathered outside: some were apparently anti-vaxxers, hoping to express their displeasure at Dan Andrews — he was meant to attend but called in sick — although a few also held placards saying “End CCP influence in the Parliament”.

Disappointed with Andrews’ no-show, some protesters armed with megaphones and loudspeakers turned their frustration towards Labor. Via a series of videos uploaded online, they alleged the meeting’s organisers only allowed Australians of Chinese heritage entry and denied white Australians. Chinese-Australian attendees I talked to rejected this claim; video footage they shared also showed both white Australians and Chinese Australians in the audience.

Penny Wong was there to garner support for four Labor candidates in Victoria, some in seats Labor desperately wants to hang on to. Labor has preselected Gabriel Ng, a lawyer and the son of a Chinese-Singaporean migrant, to contest the seat of Menzies, the electorate with the highest number of Chinese Australians in the nation. Liberal MP Keith Wolahan, having the advantage of being the incumbent, has the largest following among Chinese-speaking punters on RedNote.

Labor’s Carina Garland wrested the seat of Chisholm from Liberal MP Gladys Liu at the last federal election, but she faces a strong contender this time in Katie Allen, who has built a notable presence among RedNote users by dispensing health advice as a medical professional. Chisholm has the second-highest number of Chinese-Australian voters.

After promising the audience that Labor would provide better health care and education and reduce the cost of living, Wong changed tack and went on the offensive against Peter Dutton and the Liberals. She told attendees that the Liberals had shown no regard for the consequences of their actions for either Australian exporters or Chinese Australians. She repeated what she said in a recent Senate estimates committee hearing: “[they’re] at it again, trying to turn China into an election issue”.

Wong told the Box Hill audience that Dutton was “reckless” in government, but now “he is just hypocritical”:

The Liberals’ approach is to pick fights and to look for opportunities to divide … I say to you that Peter Dutton is still Peter Dutton.

Observing that the Coalition’s approach to China had a “disproportionate effect on Australia’s Chinese communities”, Wong had a clear message for Chinese-Australian voters: never forget what Scott Morrison, Dutton and the Coalition put you through; Labor is the party that stabilised Australia–China relations; a vote for the Coalition is a vote to repeat your recent suffering. Wong ended her speech by saying, “As we head for the election, I am asking you to consider who you can trust.”

Labor leaders and MPs have had similar messages for Chinese voters in Sydney.

In a recent, well-rehearsed forum in Reid attended by Tony Burke, Jason Clare and some other Labor candidates, Burke reminded the audience that the Liberals wanted to abolish Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Jerome Laxale, the Labor incumbent for Bennelong, also spoke, invoking dark memories of Scott Morrison hell-bent on wrecking Australia–China relations. One of the electorates with the largest number of Chinese-Australian voters in NSW, there is a strong chance of it returning to the Liberals, with Laxale’s opponent Scott Yung running a well-funded and energetic campaign.

But the most chilling message was delivered by Jason Yat–sen Li, a NSW state Labor MP. Though more fluent in Cantonese, Li chose to address the crowd of more than 200 people in the room in Mandarin (my translation):

Let’s cast our minds back to the time when Australia–China relations were at their lowest point … During the pandemic, when we Chinese Australians went out shopping, we were verbally abused on the street, even spat on and attacked. We couldn’t speak about our culture with pride. Even though we are all Australians, we were not trusted. Remember that Peter Dutton, then the defence minister, told us that the drums of war were beating? Remember that in April 2022, Dutton also said that to achieve peace we must be prepared for war? By that he meant war with China. That’s why we should never go back to the days of anti-China politics of Dutton and the Liberals.

The general tenor of Labor’s messaging to Chinese-Australian voters was encapsulated in a recent Senate estimates committee meeting two weeks ago, when James Patterson asked Penny Wong whether she thought it was reasonable to ask questions about how the government responded to China’s warships. Wong responded:

It’s reasonable to ask these questions. I think gunboat diplomacy is a return to the drums-of-war rhetoric, and I don’t think it is reasonable for the leader of the opposition to tell people in Menzies and Bennelong he’s pro-China. I don’t think it’s reasonable for [Liberal MP Keith] Wolahan to tell people that you’ve changed your position and then engage in that kind of rhetoric in Canberra.

Last week, Wong took to the shopping centres and streets of Carlingford in Parramatta in support of incumbent Andrew Carlton. During her walk-through, she told people that she was old enough to remember Pauline Hanson, who infamously declared Australia was being swamped by Asians, and reminded them that at the time Labor was the loudest critic of Hanson and her anti-Asian racism.

Video clips of these community forums and these politicians’ remarks have been widely circulated on WeChat and RedNote, where scepticism towards both major political parties endures, but trust in Dutton is significantly lower than in Albanese.

However, some seemed prepared to vote for the Liberals despite their misgivings towards the opposition leader. A cornucopia of comments selected from a RedNote chat group, in response to a post about the Coalition’s policy requiring public servants to return to work, may provide a glimpse of the breadth of these views.

Note: Dutton is often referred to here by various nicknames, including “Baldie”, “Voldemort” and “Potato” (translated from Chinese by me).

I will definitely vote Labor. The reason is simple. I just don’t want our life to be badly affected by a political atmosphere dominated by the Liberals’ hostility towards China.
Definitely will vote Labor. If Australia–China goes pear-shaped again, we’ll be the first to suffer. We would be copping a hard time from both sides.
But the submarine deal is bipartisan, and it was Labor that was provocative in the South China Seas.
I won’t vote for Labor or the Greens, but with Dutton as the head of Liberals, I won’t vote Liberals, either. So maybe I will think about independents.
But my problem is not with the Liberal Party per se; it’s with Baldie.
I will vote for whichever party promises to scrap the NDIS.
There are four voters in my household. All our votes will go to the Liberals.
But Labor is not much better. But as long as Voldemort is the boss, over my dead body if I have to vote Liberal.
The Potato has a scary demeanour. I don’t trust him.

The diversity of views being expressed on Chinese social media — and the fact that Chinese-Australian voters are affected by the full range of issues facing all Australians (not just those the politicians would like them to focus on) — makes it inadvisable to predict any trends in the various Chinese-Australian communities.

But it’s clear both major parties are working hard to woo the Chinese vote, and to highlight the dangers of voting for their opponents. With another couple of months until the likely election day, there’s still ample opportunity for parties and candidates of all political persuasions to win over this crucial, if dispersed, block of voters.

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