Rudd's small change

PRIME Minister Kevin (Lu Kewen) Rudd has demonstrated a keen appreciation for the art of shadow boxing, dancing around the Opposition's legitimate questions about his involvement with the mysterious Chinese entrepreneur Ian Tang

Kung-fu wizard Jackie Chan, with whom Rudd posed for the cameras a week ago, could not have dodged a swarm of ninja knives with greater skill, but the public still requires straight answers from Rudd about his on-going relationship with the Chinese businessman. Although Rudd may attempt to portray Tang's patronage of numerous ALP figures as nothing extraordinary, that is a humbug. Tang, through his company Beijing AustChina Technology, has now spent tens of thousands on senior members of the Rudd government and has acted as their de facto travel agent and door-opener. It's ludicrous to think there has been no quid pro quo. The Chinese are not noted for their charity, and Rudd needs to spell out the detail of his obligation. Sadly, the history of Labor members entering into side deals with Chinese entrepreneurs is not a happy one. A case in point is the bizarre episode of the NSW ALP and the companies Paragon International Management and Kingold. The link is Paul Bodisco, who in September, 1999 was a personal adviser to then-premier Bob Carr - a position he held for five years before departing in 2004 after his arrest in a Darlinghurst nightclub for possessing amphetamines. While in Carr's employ, and before his brush with the law, Bodisco appears to have acted as a runner between the premier and the NSW ALP's Sussex St headquarters, where he was an associate of Eric Roozendaal (now Roads Minister) and Mark Arbib (now a senator-elect), who succeeded each other as secretaries of the State party. Labor hagiographer Bob Ellis described Bodisco as a Roozendaal "woodchuck'', so presumably he had some sort of a gopher role with the party. An entrepreneurial fellow, Bodisco became a founding director of a company called Paragon International Management Pty Ltd that September, the other directors being Teresa Siu and Ricky Chiu. In January, 2001, Paragon changed its name to Teresa Siu & Associates Pty Ltd. Teresa Siu & Associates, which is registered as an immigration agent with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, operates from the offices of Sightseeing Photo Service Pty Ltd at 68 Erskine St, Sydney. Serendipitously, in late 1999, Kingold, a Chinese company based in Guangzhou, developed an educational exchange program with Charles Sturt University and the University of Western Sydney. Part of this program provided for Chinese students to study in Australia. As it happens, one of Kingold's Australian arms, Kingold Companies Pty Ltd, is listed on Labor's Australian Electoral Commission annual return as operating from the Erskine St premises of Teresa Siu & Associates. In January 2000, while Bodisco was a director, Paragon paid for the embattled NSW MP Joe Tripodi (now Minister for Small Business, Minister for Regulatory Reform and Minister for Ports and Waterways) and Cherie Burton MLA to travel together to China. It was worth their while, as two months after Tripodi and Burton returned Teresa Siu donated $15,000 to the NSW ALP. In November, 2000, Carr travelled to Guangzhou and signed a memorandum of understanding to formalise the exchange between Kingold and Charles Sturt, and celebrated the deal at a special dinner with Kingold's Guangzhou principals. The Paragon Gang of Three - Bodisco, Siu and Ricky Chiu - also had a special relationship with NSW MLC Henry Tsang. Its members were included in the tributes Tsang paid during his maiden speech on June 1, 1999, along with Roozendaal and Arbib, to whom Tsang gave credit for his campaign strategy focused on marginal seats. In March, 2001, Tsang went to bat for his friends. He wrote to immigration minister Phillip Ruddock, requesting that the Charles Sturt-Kingold deal be given "pre-qualified institution'' (PQI) status by the department. Under PQI, companies such as Kingold could independently verify the bona fides of visa applicants. In return, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs would give them priority processing. Unfortunately, the PQI program soon corrupted. Ruddock shut it down in November, 2002 after instituting a review that found PQI places in China were being "sold'' and an increasing number of Chinese students were overstaying their visas. Since Kingold established its exchange program with Charles Sturt and the University of Western Sydney, it has donated $155,000 to the NSW ALP. During the 2002 fiscal year alone it gave $93,000, making it the third-largest non-union donor to the ALP that year. For his sterling efforts on its behalf and for services to the community and so on, Charles Sturt awarded Tsang an honorary doctorate in April, 2002. The lines from Bodisco to the Chinese and a series of influential Labor figures are quite clear. There is no evidence that any laws were broken in this case, just as there is no evidence of any crime in Rudd's connections to his generous Chinese sponsor. Both cases, however, raise reasonable questions of judgment because of the inescapable perception that the donors may have received more favourable treatment because of their practice of oiling the doors to power. Unfortunately, no one in NSW would be surprised at Sussex St's wheeling and dealing - certainly not after the Wollongong cash-and-sex developer scandal - but Lu Kewen promised openness, transparency and a squeaky-clean approach to government. After futilely hounding the Howard government over the AWB matter, Rudd vowed to bring about change. He has now demonstrated that he was only talking about small change.