Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong says the Coalition did not appeal to voters of Chinese descent, following substantial swings to the Labor Party in several seats with high numbers of Chinese Australians.
Notably, in Sydney’s Bennelong, Labor saw a 13.6 percent jump in first preference votes, while the centre-right Liberal Party experienced a 5.3 percent drop.
In Reid, Labor reported a 7.5 percent increase in first preference votes compared to a 5.9 percent fall for the Liberals.
Major swings were also been observed in Melbourne’s Menzies, Aston, and Chisholm, where Labor candidates are leading, while the Brisbane seat of Moreton recorded a 5.2 percent primary vote swing to Labor, and 7.5 percent away from Liberal.
During an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Wong continued to add pressure to the Liberals, highlighting Liberal Senator Jane Hume’s television comments that “Chinese spies” were handing out flyers for Labor Housing Minister Clare O'Neil.
“I thought Jane Hume saying, asserting that Labor volunteers, Chinese volunteers were spies was an extraordinary thing to say,” she said.
“And it continued a pattern of comments and behaviour by the Liberal Party that Chinese Australians were rightly concerned by.”
The minister also stated that the swing toward Labor in several key seats clearly showed the Chinese community’s views about the Liberals.
Wong had earlier pounced on Hume’s comments to appeal to voters.
Just a few days before the election day, the senator took to several Chinese-based social media apps like WeChat and RedNote to say the Liberal Party was questioning their loyalty.
The minister declined to comment whether her advertising campaign helped Labor gain an advantage in seats with Chinese communities.
CCP Issue Lingers Over Election
Meanwhile, the CCP’s influence over the Australian election has been an ongoing issue.A video featuring the campaign volunteers, who are Chinese, revealed the Hubei Association required them to support the Teal MP because her values were said to align with Chinese people.
The Hubei Association is a group linked to the CCP’s United Work Front Department–an agency tasked with gaining influence over individuals and entities outside China.
While Ryan said she was unsure about the video, the MP expressed her gratitude for the support of the Chinese community in the past three years.
“I’m not sure about the interpretation of that video, whether it’s accurate, but you know certainly no one’s been compelled to volunteer for me, but I’m grateful for those people who’ve come out to volunteer for me on my campaign,” she said.
Meanwhile, in the seat of Bennelong, Yan Zehua, a former executive vice president of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China (ACPPRC), was spotted posing with Liberal candidate Scott Yung near an early voting centre in April.
Yan was seen wearing a Liberal campaign T-shirt and holding flyers.
It was also reported that he was running a volunteer group for Yung on social media.
The ACPPRC was declared a “foreign government related entity” by the Attorney-General’s Department under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018 in 2023.
The organisation has also been known for working with the CCP’s United Work Front.
Chinese Community’s Attitude Toward Liberals
In the 2022 federal election, there was a substantial shift to Labor among Chinese Australian voters in many key seats, which was attributed to the party’s victory.It was reported that then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s criticism of the CCP’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic had caused a number of Liberal supporters to switch sides as they believed Morrison’s action exacerbated anti-Chinese racism in Australia.
According to the survey, 64 percent of the 3,000 respondents said they would vote for Labor in this election compared to 27 percent who preferred the Liberals.
