David Penberthy: There are a few things Ms Lee has done that puzzled her colleagues, such as warning them not to meet with Falun Gong for fear of offending Beijing

The SA Liberal Party has the capacity to turn almost anything into a stoush but there is more to the Jing Lee debate than factional hackery, writes David Penberthy.

There is a view within the State Liberal Party that the recent scrutiny of Liberal MLC Jing Lee is merely a factionally driven attack aimed at damaging both her and her ascendant moderate faction.

While it would be wrong to argue that no one on the conservative side of the Liberal Party has been enjoying the spectacle, it is incorrect to dismiss the Jing Lee story as a meaningless factional flare-up.

Indeed, the manner in which this story has been dismissed out of hand by moderates, and now pursued with such gusto by conservatives, stands as testament to the South Australian Liberal Party’s capacity to turn almost anything into a factional stoush.

The origins of the Jing Lee story live away from the world of factional politics and stem from people in academia and policy research. These are people who study politics, but don’t practise it. But their concerns are shared by people across politics, in sections of the Labor Party, sections of the Liberal Party, among independents who worry about national security and Greens who worry about human rights.

SA Liberal MP Jing Lee.

And the starting point for the story was not Jing Lee herself, but the activities of the Chinese Consul-General in Adelaide. There is a body of research out there on the workings of the extravagantly staffed Consul-General here in SA, and the people in our community who support it and work with it. I have seen it. One of the names that comes up frequently in it is Jing Lee.

That does not make her a spy, or an agent of influence. But it is fair on her actions to describe her as a defender of Beijing, be it through innocent friendliness or deliberate enthusiasm, at a time when the conduct of Communist China is now running so clearly against the Australian national interest and Australian values.

Ms Lee has an impressive squad of backers among state and federal Liberals, including Premier Steven Marshall, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham and former defence minister, party veteran Christopher Pyne. Writing in his column in The Advertiser on Monday, Mr Pyne described the scrutiny of Ms Lee as the new McCarthyism, a reference to the baseless communist witch-hunts used to slur public figures in the US in the 1950s.

I admire Christopher’s loyalty. But the question I have with Ms Lee is whether the scrutiny she has attracted is baseless. I would also stress that the scrutiny should have nothing to do with her ancestry, but her actions, as was the case with ex-Labor senator Sam Dastyari.

There are a few things Ms Lee has done that puzzled her colleagues, such as warning them not to meet with Falun Gong for fear of offending Beijing. Hardly a major crime, even though it is odd (as some of her colleagues said) that an Australian politician would be worried about the need not to offend Beijing.

She spoke at a Chinese Consul-General function in 2017, where she urged SA to sign on to China’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure program. You could argue that puts her in the same position as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. And, besides, she recanted that position in her statement of two weeks ago, saying she does not support those deals.

She has a very close friend who has attended Chinese Communist Party meetings in Beijing and is the SA vice-president of the Australian Council for the Peaceful Reunification of China, a group that is directly linked to the CCP, and which argues that Taiwan and Hong Kong should be returned to Beijing’s control. Being friends with someone doesn’t mean you share their opinions, I suppose.

All of the above might sound flimsy. It might prove Christopher Pyne’s assertion that people are adding two and two and getting five.

But the key point none of Jing Lee’s defenders have yet addressed involves her frequent involvement with a group called the SA Xinjiang Association, named after the troubled northwest Chinese province which is home to the Uighur people. To say that these people are persecuted is an understatement. Human rights groups say hundreds of thousands of Uighurs have been herded into internment camps, or disappeared, with the coronavirus being used in the past few weeks to justify further mass incarcerations in a region with very low infection rates. If you ask the SA Xinjiang Association about life in the region, it’s all fine and dandy. In fact, don’t ask them, ask the Chinese Consulate, as the two organisations appear to be inseparable. The SA Xinjiang Association has no office, it doesn’t even have a telephone, but holds its events in conjunction with consular staff, who have addressed its gatherings talking about the peace and progress in Xinjiang.

Most of its members aren’t Uighurs, but Han Chinese, and they have enraged Adelaide’s 1500-strong Uighur community, the biggest in Australia, by appropriating traditional song, dance and dress to present a misleadingly happy picture of Uighur life.

Security experts and academics believe the Xinjiang Association is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s international propaganda arm, the United Front Work Department, where groups are created in conjunction with consular staff to present positive messages about Beijing. This organisation has been given a rail’s run in terms of attendance and access by Jing Lee, who even welcomed a tour of State Parliament for its members, and took them into the chamber.

Jing Lee has argued that, as a committed multiculturalist, she meets many groups and that meeting them does not mean you endorse them. Well, there’s one group she doesn’t meet, and by her actions you would suspect probably doesn’t endorse, and that’s the East Turkistan Australian Association, the official Uighur group in Adelaide, whose members are dismayed by her conduct.

As I said, she’s no spy. Just an innocent friend or a deliberate enthusiast. A friend or enthusiast of a regime that is currently trying to destroy our wine industry, our grain industry, our beef industry, the overseas student industry, rounding up journalists for interrogation, and interning Uighurs in camps.