China’s influence runs deep within the NSW Labor Party
The extent to which Chinese Communist Party figures have infiltrated our political system is alarming, writes Sharri Markson, and runs far deeper than the ties revealed in ICAC this week.
Opinion
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The extent to which Chinese Communist Party figures have infiltrated our political system is alarming.
The Labor Party, which could easily have been in power at a state and federal level right now, has been severely compromised by its reliance on cash from billionaires linked to Beijing.
The Party’s NSW branch — the most powerful in the country and which has flexed its muscles in recent years even to the extent of rolling prime ministers — is compromised, corrupt and rotten.
Outgoing General Secretary Kaila Murnain, now famous for uttering the words, “What the shit?”, when she discovered a banned Chinese donor, Huang Xiangmo, had illegally donated $100,000, was the first figure to fall as a result of ICAC’s hearings this week.
But this scandal of the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of Labor is far greater than Murnain, who took the top job in 2016 at just 29 years old with the backing of Graham Richardson.
She had a glittering political career ahead of her, and it’s now in tatters.
In the web of Chinese influence, Murnain is a bit player whose alleged shortcomings were misleading the Electoral Commission and covering up the donation solicited before her ascension to the top job.
In total, billionaire property developer Huang Xiangmo and his companies donated more than $610,000 to the ALP between 2012 and 2016. He gave millions to both sides of politics and many politicians developed close relationships with Huang, including former Liberal minister Andrew Robb.
Mr Huang eventually had his residency stripped by the Australian Government over national security concerns about his links to a Communist Party agency, United Front Work Department, and was prevented from returning to his Mosman home.
He is now living the high life in Hong Kong in a $95 million mansion which he bought in January this year.
But through his sizeable donations, Huang Xiangmo was able to get access to the highest levels of power in both the Labor and Liberal Party.
He gave generously at party fundraisers, the money granting him intimate access with those the Beijing Government believed were future leaders of our country.
It eased a path to friendships.
But it was more than that.
Huang Xiangmo effectively got a close friend into state parliament and had a former foreign minister singing from his song sheet.
From there, his political connections and influence were extensive. He had access to everyone from Bill Shorten to former shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, who first introduced Murnain to Mr Huang, and Tony Bourke who received a $30,000 donation from Mr Huang.
Just imagine if Labor had won the federal election: the government would be scandalously compromised and in full-blown crisis mode as a result of the present investigations.
The Labor MP Mr Huang helped get into parliament was Ernest Wong, who security agencies have also had concerns about.
ICAC has been told in a deal, Wong took Eric Roozendaal’s senate seat and Roozendaal went to work for Mr Huang at his YuHu Group.
It is truly astounding that an individual with serious links to the Chinese Communist Party actually became an MP.
Meanwhile, the intolerable ex-NSW premier Bob Carr went from the role of foreign minister, where he had access to classified top-secret information, to the employ of a propaganda Chinese think-tank founded with funding by — you guessed it — Mr Huang.
Mr Huang gave $1.8 million to help set up the Australian China Relations Institute (ACRI) in collaboration with UTS.
At the time he said he hand-picked Carr as the director!
When Mr Huang was no longer welcome as a donor at ACRI, a raft of corporates stepped in to replace the funding for the propaganda institute.
One of these companies is the firm representing the Labor Party, Holding Redlich.
What a web. Murnain could be forgiven for now questioning their legal advice to her — to shut up about the real source of $100,000 in cash stuffed in Aldi bags.
During his time at ACRI, it’s been reported that Carr took journalists like news.com.au’s Malcolm Farr, Jim Middleton and Ross Gittins on PR trips to Beijing.
All the while, he hypocritically tried to ban journalists and politicians from going on study tours to Israel — a democracy, unlike China — and disgracefully advocated a BDS.
Former Labor MP Michael Danby penned a parliamentary speech critical of Carr’s work with ACRI and pointing out his hypocrisy on study tours.
But he was silenced, banned from delivering it in parliament.
He was not allowed to criticise Carr or a prominent Labor donor.
Danby told me he was summoned to Bill Shorten’s office and ordered to pull the speech.
Mr Huang had paid $100,000 to sit with Bill Shorten and former Labor leader Luke Foley at a Chinese Friends of Labor fundraising dinner in 2015.
As I reported in 2016, Bill Shorten then attended Mr Huang’s daughter, Carina’s, wedding in January of that year at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney.
Yep, Labor is up to its neck in it.
The tentacles are far-reaching.
And, as is evident, the web is far greater than Murnain.
It’s a point Danby makes about the dramatic shift in the NSW Right faction.
“The fish stinks from the head,” he said.
“It is unfair to these Labor Party figures in appearing before ICAC that they are bearing the full odium of contact with the aggressive regimen in Beijing.
The bigger picture is the intense infiltration of the Chinese Government in our political system, and that of other western democracies.
This is a worldwide problem as Chinese power grows under Xi Jinping and the communist state exerts its influence into Western democracies.