Andrew Bolt: Liberals face big dilemma on China after humiliating Aston by-election loss

The Liberal Party needs to decide whether they do the right thing or the easy one after they were humiliated in the Aston by-election.

After their loss in Aston, the Liberal Party needs to decide whether it does the right thing or the easy one, writes Andrew Bolt. Picture: David Crosling

HERE’S one clue to the Liberals’ agony. In the week before they were humiliated in Saturday’s Aston by-election, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was in China.

Aston, a federal seat in Melbourne’s outer-eastern mortgage belt, was supposedly Liberal heartland.

Even the Albanese government didn’t expect to win it, especially when no government has won a seat from the Opposition in 123 years.

But Aston has a special characteristic. More than 14 per cent of its voters are of Chinese background.

In fact, 11 per cent speak Mandarin or Cantonese at home, and just days before they voted they saw their state Labor Premier in their old homeland, swearing friendship to China.

In truth, much of that trip stank. It was hastily and secretively arranged with no clear public agenda other than supposedly luring even more Chinese students.

Of course the Liberals reacted. Why the secrecy? Why did Andrews ban journalists and education officials from his trip?

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party candidate for Aston Roshena Campbell campaigning together. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Ascui

Why exactly was Andrews cosying up so much to the dictatorship that had just re-pledged its support to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, just indicted as a war criminal?

But think how this played out in Aston.

No, not all ethnic Chinese here like the Chinese dictatorship. Many even fled it, but blood is often thicker than water, and we all yearn to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

So what would you choose? Australia, which seems to despise itself and its alleged racism, or ultra-nationalistic China, rising from what its dictator, Xi Jinping, calls a “century of humiliation” to the brink of becoming the world’s greatest superpower?

And which party would you back? Labor or the Liberals, who in government denounced the growing threat from China and were punished by China with trade bans for being “anti-Chinese”?

Sure enough, ethnic Chinese voters – who once tended to vote Liberal – have now swung hard to Labor.

In last year’s federal election, seats with one in five voters of Chinese background swung more than 8 per cent against the Liberals, twice the national swing.

In the NSW election a week ago, it was the same story in the 10 electorates with most ethnic Chinese voters. Paramatta, with 16 per cent of voters with Chinese background, swung 15 per cent against the Liberals.

NSW Labor MP Jason Yat-Sen Li drew a direct link: “People are still angry about the fearmongering around China … Imagine if the country you are from and identified with is portrayed as an enemy, aggressor or threat to Australia.”

Sure, but the Liberals now face a near-existential dilemma on China. Do they do the right thing or the easy one? Do they resist the real threat from the communist dictatorship, or shut up to win more ethnic Chinese votes?

All too late for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, though, who as Defence Minister did most to warn against China’s threat.

Premier Daniel Andrews travelled to China right before the by-election. Picture: David Geraghty

The very same dilemma is true with global warming, the issue the media Left gloats is the Liberals’ fatal flaw. Should they do the right thing or the easy one?

The right thing would be to resist the hysteria, now that the cost of global warming policies is clearly worse than global warming itself. Electricity bills are crippling, and we’re critically short of electricity and even domestic gas.

In fact, Inpex, which owns a $60bn project here supplying 10 per cent of Japan’s gas and 15 per cent of South Korea’s, last week warned the Albanese government’s global warming policies even threatened world peace.

Inpex boss Takayuki Ueda said Australia now “quiet-quitting” the gas industry meant leaving Russia, China and Iran to supply what we didn’t.

That “would represent a direct threat to the rules-based international order essential to the peace, stability and prosperity of the region, if not the world”.

But the easy thing for the Liberals is to go along with the global warming hysteria, especially when many journalists are warming crusaders. Sadly, many Liberals do just that.

Same thing again with Labor’s planned Voice, a kind of Aboriginal-only parliament in our Constitution. Do the Liberals do the easy thing or the right thing for the country?

In fact, the Liberals are so divided that Dutton doesn’t dare argue the Voice is racist, a disastrous form of apartheid, especially when most journalists are violently for that, too. He picks at details instead.

I know, doing the right thing means you must put values above victory.

But the Liberals these days have neither. Aston voters must have wondered: what are they actually for?