Frantic calls, party concern as Lib candidate under spotlight

Earlier this month, senior Liberal MPs began receiving frantic calls from the party’s state director, Chris Stone. The administrator was desperately trying to figure out who was behind a series of damaging stories about Bennelong candidate Scott Yung.

The scars of the internecine factional warring that engulfed the NSW Liberal Party in the lead-up to the 2022 election are still raw. The party was more recently subject to a federal takeover. But senior Liberal sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose private matters, said Stone’s worried calls were telling for another reason.

Bennelong Liberal candidate Scott Yung campaigning in Lane Cove.Credit: Nick Moir

Contesting the most marginal seat in Australia, one where Yung is considered the favourite by bookmakers, the risk was not simply losing a must-win electorate but the fear there was something more waiting in the shadows that could potentially derail the Liberal campaign.

Hushed conversations were also taking place among senior Liberals about Yung during budget week in Canberra. The tenor was the same.

Stone was likely aware of something many of those MPs were not. An email from an “Australian Citizen” to the Labor and Liberal HQs on February 25 – just eight days before the Herald’s first story – levelled four allegations against Yung and said they had “serious concerns” about his candidacy.

“The integrity of the party and its members is paramount. Choosing the right candidates to represent Australia is far more important than simply securing a seat. Should these issues come to light in the public domain, it could severely harm the party’s reputation and future prospects,” the email read.

An anonymous email sent to Labor and Liberal HQs about Bennelong candidate Scott Yung on February 25, 2025. The author incorrectly refers to Yung as the “current member for Bennelong”.

The allegations were light on detail and unsupported by evidence, so easily could have been dismissed as another unsubstantiated dirt file circulated in the shadow of a federal election campaign. Labor HQ tried reaching out to the author of the email to no avail, Sussex Street sources said.

But the mysterious correspondence proved prescient.

On March 5, Yung admitted to falsely claiming he had raised $60,000 during an intimate dinner with John Howard ahead of the 2019 state election. He did not specify how much was actually raised. Then revelations came out that the then-Kogarah candidate engaged a digital strategy firm to undertake work potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars.

One month later, a leaked video of a speech Yung gave during a Lunar New Year celebration discredited previous efforts to distance himself from Xie Xiongming, a casino high roller linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

In a statement responding to questions about Xie and his remarks in the video, Yung said he was invited to speak and “as is standard practice, I acknowledged those present in the room with culturally appropriate honorifics”.

Two of the allegations contained in the February 25 email went to these stories. One bullet point was titled “Unclear Funding Sources in Elections”, while another raised potential conflicts of interest “regarding Scott’s connections to China and their impact on Australian interests”.

The Herald has chosen not to disclose the other two unsubstantiated allegations.

Liberal heartland?

Bennelong was always going to be a bellwether seat for the Coalition’s prospects at the May 3 election. The Australian Electoral Commission’s redistribution left Bennelong – the suburban seat of former Liberal prime minister John Howard – notionally Liberal, with a buffer of just 0.04 per cent.

Bennelong was a Liberal heartland. But 15 years after former ABC journalist Maxine McKew dethroned Howard, voters across Ryde, Meadowbank and Eastwood dramatically walked away from the Liberal Party to deliver Labor a stunning victory, only the second time the party has held the seat in 53 years.

If Labor MP Jerome Laxale manages to hold on, the Coalition faces a long night.

Yung, who has been a member of the party since meeting NSW Liberal frontbencher Mark Coure in 2016, divides opinion in the notoriously tribal party.

Some see the multilingual son of parents from Shanghai and Hong Kong as the party’s future: an articulate young man who can appeal to a diaspora once turned off by Scott Morrison’s hawkish rhetoric about China.

Liberal insiders talk about Yung’s capacity to reach into the Chinese diaspora to organise volunteers with little notice and fundraise well beyond his stature given he holds no public office. The magnetism of Yung has captured senior Liberals, including leader Peter Dutton, who offered him an endorsement for his preselection.

Two $1500 per head “private dinners” were planned with Yung: one was held on April 8 with Senator Anne Ruston; the other scheduled for April 24 with former prime minister Tony Abbott was later cancelled with no explanation. But they show the fundraising pull Yung can muster, some sources say.

A Liberal spokesman did not explain why the Le Montage fundraiser was cancelled but said Yung and Abbott “will be attending a community event in the electorate on that night instead”.

Some point to the Liberal Party Chinese Youth Council as evidence of his fundraising ability. Established by Yung, the official launch at Doltone House in July 2018 was a spectacular success, pulling anywhere from 800 to 1000 attendees, according to estimates on social media. The cheapest seats went for $99 each, while platinum tables cost $4500.

Yung sat at the head table between then-premier Gladys Berejiklian and then-federal North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman.

Yung spruiks a tale of typical Liberal aspiration: born into a Waterloo housing commission, climbed his way through Mark Bouris’ Yellow Brick Road mortgage brokers to become head of recruitment, joining the Liberal Party along the way.

Then there’s the now legendary story of how the then little-known Yung came within 1500 votes of toppling Labor MP Chris Minns. With little funding and the electorate not on Liberal HQ’s radar until late in the campaign, Yung pulled off a 5.1 per cent two-party-preferred swing.

But others in the party are less convinced by the Yung lore.

“He’s a used car salesman,” says one senior Liberal speaking on the condition of anonymity. “All flash and no substance”.

There’s the facade of Yung, then there’s the reality, a Liberal powerbroker says.

The Liberal Party Chinese Youth Council event at Doltone House is underscored by Liberal MPs as having major question marks. There is only $57,010 in donations disclosed to the NSW Electoral Commission for the event. Divided by the 797 attendees, the number Yung claims attended in his nomination candidate form, equates to about $70 per head – hardly enough to cover the catering.

Even taking the most conservative estimates, 797 people buying the cheapest $99 tickets equates to $78,903 — nearly $22,000 more than what has been disclosed. The party’s disclosures only list 26 donations across 20 separate donors, just a fraction of the event’s attendees. Yung and his mother account for $8180 of the associated donations, or more than 14 per cent, according to disclosures with the Electoral Commission.

A Liberal Party spokesman said: “The Liberal Party Chinese Youth Council continues to be a group within the division. The ticketed event that you’re referring to was funded by ticket sales and the division.”

The Herald has, on multiple occasions, attempted to ask Yung about this in person. First, at the Bennelong campaign launch at the Ryde-Eastwood RSL on April 5 (Yung was snuck in and out of the venue). Then, he declined to answer questions at a candidate forum in Macquarie Park two days later.

“I’ve given everything I’ve just shared to you, and I just got nothing more to add,” he said.

Yung was contacted by the Herald again for this story.

When Sky News host Laura Jayes asked at the end of March whether there were any other “skeletons in your closet” after the Herald’s story about his fundraising mishap and other matters, Yung did not respond directly. “If that’s the best that the other side has. What I’m focused on is ensuring that we bring back strong economic management to bring down the cost of living,” he said.

Pressed on whether he had been “upfront and honest”, Yung replied: “100 per cent.”

A well-connected man: Scott Yung campaigning in Hurstville with Dominic Perottet in 2019.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Even the Kogarah run, the crown jewel of the Yung mythology, is marked by infighting.

Correspondence obtained by the Herald between Yung’s campaign team just two days before the state election shows serious concerns about a series of videos posted on the candidate’s social media profiles seemingly without the necessary political authorisation.

“I have hidden every video I couldn’t edit to add the authorisation,” wrote Yung’s campaign manager.

“Now I just hope Labor hasn’t screenshot [sic] any of these posts. Because I sure would have, and I’d be walking it up to the returning officer or taking it to the papers.”

An associate of Yung’s named Andy Wong then directs a barrage of abuse at the campaign manager, saying, “Stop f--king complaining like a girl. All talk, no action … if you want to quit F--ken quit. Don’t chuck this bluffing shit.”

Yung’s campaign manager replies: “I’m taking my credit card off the account, restoring scott as admin, then leaving as an admin.”

Yung’s voice is absent from the chat. Breaking electoral material laws during the election campaign period can be a criminal offence. The Herald is not suggesting Yung broke these laws, just that there are questions to be answered as a result of the leaked correspondence, some of which is detailed below.

Yung was contacted by the Herald for comment.

Two years later, explaining his success during the Kogarah campaign, Yung claimed to have doorknocked the electorate of 40,000 homes “one and a half times”. Over a six-week campaign, this would have involved Yung and a team of seven visiting 200 homes every day.

“Absolute bullshit,” one Liberal MP suggested.

This feat seems less feasible given a Chinese language advertorial paid for by Yung’s team boasted the candidate would spend “one or two days every week making ‘nuisance calls’,” saying at maximum they “made more than 100 calls a day”.

In his endorsement of Yung, Dutton said: “Scott had demonstrated his strength as a Liberal Party candidate and skill as a campaigner”, noting the “more than 200,000 followers on social media” he gained in eight weeks.

But Yung has nowhere near 200,000 followers. Six years after the campaign, his public profiles have about 3800 on Instagram and 1200 on Facebook. WeChat, the Chinese social media platform, doesn’t disclose followers of public profiles, but his most popular post only has 13,000 views.

Despite the question marks, one only has to drive through Ryde to see Yung has a serious chance of claiming Bennelong. His corflutes have sprung up across front lawns and walls right through suburbs that rejected the Liberal Party in 2022.

With each day closer to polling day, Yung’s two worlds, facade and legend, have converged. The result on May 3 could determine which he is remembered by.

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