Michael Daley’s concerns for Maroubra revealed: ‘I don’t want it to become Chatswood by the sea’
Michael Daley has gone into damage control days out from the state election and now The Daily Telegraph can reveal the contents of a letter sent by the Labor leader to voters in which he expressed concerns about overdevelopment and foreign investment in the beachside suburb of Maroubra.
NSW
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Michael Daley’s anti-migrant remarks could cost the Opposition Leader crucial votes in seats with high multicultural constituencies, with the government changing tack to launch an eleventh-hour assault on Labor strongholds in Western Sydney.
The Labor leader was yesterday forced to retreat to safe Labor territory and continue to apologise for his divisive remarks about Chinese people taking jobs from “our kids” as internal Liberal tracking polling showed support for his party dropping in a second ALP seat with a large migrant population.
As the party tried to stem the fallout, an advertisement featuring Mr Daley and his family appeared on the front page of the Australian Chinese Daily newspaper.
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The caption is understood to read, “Michael Daley and Labor. Put education and health before stadium revamp. Put people first.”
The advertisement featured 10 Labor MPs and candidates who have large migrant populations in their electorates, such as Julia Finn in Granville, Durga Owen in Seven Hills and Jerome Laxale in Ryde as well as shadow ministers Chris Minns (Kogarah) and Jodi McKay (Strathfield).
However, internal Liberal polling last night showed support for Labor in Ms McKay’s inner west seat — which she holds with a wafer-thin margin of 1.8 per cent — falling.
The Strathfield poll showed support for Liberals last night was 42.6 per cent compared to 34.3 per cent for Labor. It comes a day after the same tracking poll method revealed a 7 per cent swing against Labor in Kogarah, which also has a large Chinese population.
Mr Daley has gone into damage control after a video emerged on Monday showing him saying that Asian migrants are taking the jobs of young Australians being forced to “flee” Sydney.
He made the controversial comments at a “politics in the pub” session in Wentworth Falls in September.
It comes as a letter Mr Daley sent to his community in March 2017 emerged in which he warned that foreign investors were partly responsible for “local families” being priced out of the housing market.
Addressing overdevelopment risks in Maroubra, Mr Daley wrote: “the tragedy of this is that the tens of thousands of new dwellings will do nothing to help affordability because 90 per cent of the units will be snapped up by cashed-up foreign and domestic investors and what’s left will be too expensive for young people and local families.”
He also said he didn’t want Maroubra to become “Chatswood by the sea”.
Yesterday Mr Daley was flanked by Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore in the safe Labor seat of Heffron — where 17.7 per cent of the population have Chinese ancestry — as he apologised again for the September remarks and attempted to attack the Coalition on climate change.
“I’m hoping people will see my comments were not intended to come out the way they did, but I misspoke, I could’ve chosen my words more carefully,” he said.
“I’ve had better days, and I take responsibility for that.”
In a bid to capitalise on momentum against Mr Daley, Ms Berejiklian and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet yesterday toured Kogarah as well as other Labor-held Sydney electorates Bankstown and Liverpool, which also have high migrant populations.
Kogarah was not on the Coalition’s radar prior to the video surfacing and it’s understood the Premier and Treasurer’s visit to the electorate with Liberal candidate Scott Yung had not been planned before yesterday.
The fact the Coalition are now targeting it shows they believe that Mr Daley’s remarks have had a significant impact on the Asian community there.
The government slammed Mr Daley’s anti-migrant comments while touring Kogarah yesterday, a stop on the campaign trail that had not been on the Coalition’s radar prior to the video surfacing.
The Coalition are now targeting the south Sydney seat as it shows they believe Mr Daley’s remarks have had a significant impact on the Asian community there.
Chinese is by far the most common ancestry in Kogarah at 28 per cent, according to Census data.
Meanwhile, Bankstown has a large proportion of Lebanese residents at 16 per cent while Vietnamese is among the top ancestries in Liverpool at six per cent.
Ms Berejiklian criticised Mr Daley’s remarks in Bankstown, saying she was “personally offended”.
“First and foremost I feel, how can I put this, empathetic to anyone who is hurt by those comments. They were offensive and what this shows is how two-faced the Leader of the Opposition is,” she said.
“He says one thing to one group, another thing to another group but when you single out one section of the community you offend all of us.
“I think the community deserves to hear an apology from him but he also needs to apologise for being dishonest.”
Mr Perrottet greeted constituents on the hustings in Hurstville this afternoon in Mr Minns’ seat of Kogarah alongside Liberal candidate Scott Yung.
Don’t worry @michaeldaleyMP I stole an Australian newsreaders job without a PhD. We will take all the jobs regardless of our education.
— Lee Lin Chin (@LeeLinChin) March 19, 2019
Mr Yung said he was “very hurt” by Mr Daley’s comments.
“It’s absolutely racist,” he said.
“Whether you’re a 50-year-old Australian or whether you’re a 26-year-old Australian like myself, many of us in this area have come from migrant backgrounds and it’s deeply hurtful and deeply offensive.”
As Labor went into damage control on Tuesday, The Daily Telegraph revealed key front bencher Chris Minns broke ranks to plead support for his electorate’s Chinese community with a message in Mandarin after Mr Daley warned Asians were taking the jobs of young Sydney people.
Former SBS Newsreader Lee Lin Chin hit back on social media after the incident was made public.
“Don’t worry Michael Daley, I stole an Australian newsreaders job without a PhD,” she wrote on Twitter.
“We will take the jobs regardless of our education.”
It came as Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan said he wants to look at introducing a parliamentary code of conduct on discussing race.
While Mr Daley tried to clarify on Tuesday that he didn’t mean to cause offence with his comments, he also said he will always “call it as I see it” and that he was actually talking about housing affordability and cost of living pressures.
“I’ve said it’s not a bad thing because Asian kids are coming to work here, it’s a bad thing because I’d like my daughter and others like her to remain here.”
Premier pledges free mobile dental checks for kids
EXCLUSIVE: NSW primary school kids will get free mobile dental checks under a Berejiklian government election pledge announced today.
The program — designed to ensure more children receive basic dental care — will begin in Western Sydney, the mid north coast and the Central Coast. It is expected the program would then be rolled out across the state.
Children will receive deep teeth cleaning and basic dental care such as fissure sealing, fillings and fluoride protection for free.
Currently NSW public dental services provide free dental services for children aged to 18, but the mobile school program will ensure children don’t fall through the net.
The program would commence in July 2019 and will be funded to the tune of $70 million over four years.
It would provide 35 mobile vans that will target 136,000 children in the trial zones.
“Dental health is so important to give kids a great start in life and we want to make it easier for families to get access to vital dental services,” Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.
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Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the scheme would make it easier for parents to know their children were getting preventive checks.
The dental vans would visit each primary school in the selected regions annually.
A study released last week found that more than a quarter of Australian adults are suffering from tooth decay and 23 per cent have periodontal disease.
— By Anna Caldwell
NSW Labor plan to sell new homes cheaper could be rorted
EXCLUSIVE: Housing industry experts have warned a Labor policy to sell new homes at reduced prices to families earning up to $173,500 could be open to rorting.
A cornerstone of NSW Labor’s policy on affordable housing is a plan to make up to 15 per cent of new houses and apartments available for purchase or rent below market value to those deemed to be moderate or low income earners.
But housing industry experts warn that the scheme is open to rorting because individuals and families could simply onsell the house or apartment at the market rate.
It is understood the policy would have strict rules to stop someone from flipping the new property.
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But experts say once an individual owns a property, the government can’t stop them from selling their own property.
Those on low and moderate incomes earners would be eligible to purchase the property. Under current NSW Family and Community Services definitions, that means a family with four children living in Sydney with a household income of up to $173,500 would be considered a moderate income earner and would qualify for the scheme.
Housing Industry Association Managing Director David Bare said the target would effectively tax the other 85 per cent of purchasers within a development, further increasing house prices.
“Once a person buys a house nobody can force you to live in it for any amount of time, therefore it’s impossible to imagine this approach to providing affordable homes won’t simply turn into people just selling and keeping the profit,” he said.
“The other problem is that the residential developer building the homes or a new estate won’t be receiving a subsidy to build these 15 per cent of affordable housing stock.
“That means that people who are buying the other new homes in an estate or a new apartment building who are paying the full market price for their home are effectively paying to subsidise the other 15 per cent of homes involved with the affordable housing scheme.”
— By Christopher Harris
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