Australia holds its first political debate in Mandarin

The Liberal and Labor candidates for the eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm made history yesterday.

Now you’re speaking my language ... Labor’s Jennifer Yang, left, with Liberal Gladys Liu before Australia’s first Mandarin-language political debate. Picture: David Geraghty

The Liberal and Labor candidates for the eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm made history yesterday, conducting the first Australian federal election debate in Mandarin and English.

For Hong Kong-born Liberal candidate and former speech pathologist Gladys Liu, it was her third language after Cantonese and English, but she said she was keen to connect with a key part of the constituency in the seat that is being vacated by Liberal-turned-independent Julia Banks.

Taiwanese-born former mayor Jennifer Yang was up for the debate at Glen Waverley’s Mountain View Hotel, in the electorate that takes in Box Hill and Chadstone.

In front of about 100 people — almost all of whom appeared to be of Chinese heritage — both candidates were at their most fiery on a question regarding the “glass ceiling” and “bamboo ceiling” they would be breaking through as the first woman with Chinese heritage in the House of Representatives.

“To me, I don’t really see any kind of ceiling because I am an achiever and I always do my best to achieve,” Ms Liu said. “In the party, I get preselected among eight candidates. We had only one Chinese. That’s me. And we have only two women. And I won. I won on merit, not because I wear a skirt. There is no such thing (as a ceiling) if you have the self-confidence.”

Ms Yang said she was focused on representing all of Chisholm, regardless of gender, ethnicity or sexuality. “That being said, I’m acutely aware of the honour that would come with being the first woman with Chinese heritage in the lower house,” she said.

“The parliament should reflect the people it serves, and the lack of cultural and gender diversity is a real shame. I’m proud that half of Labor’s MPs and senators will be female by 2020, and unfortunately the Liberals can’t say the same thing. Let’s not forget the only ­reason why my opposition is not Julia Banks is because she was bullied out of the Liberal Party.”

About 19.7 per cent of Chisholm residents were born in China according to the most recent census, of which roughly half are Australian citizens with voting rights.

Ms Liu’s role as a key campaigner with important links to the local Chinese community and strategic use of the Chinese social media platform WeChat was seen as crucial to Ms Banks’s success in 2016, which resulted in Chisholm being the only seat gained by the Turnbull government.

A Labor strategist told The Australian the party expected Ms Liu to use Ms Yang’s Taiwanese heritage against her with mainland Chinese voters, but that they were better prepared to run their own WeChat campaign than they were in 2016. Chisholm is high on the list of Victorian seats Labor believes it can regain, but both sides are expecting the battle to be hard-fought, with the seat currently held by the Liberals by a notional 3.4 per cent following a redistribution. One question sought to highlight Ms Liu’s stance on same-sex marriage, after she was quoted in 2016 saying: “Chinese people are coming to Australia because they want good things for the next generation, not to be destroyed — they use the word destroyed — [by] same-sex, transgender, intergender. All this rubbish.”

Ms Liu dismissed the Guardian’s reporting as “fake” and “wrong”, saying she had been “misrepresented”. “I was asked about what I had heard from the Chinese community and I told the person who interviewed me what I heard. When it was reported, it became my words,” she said.

Ms Yang said Ms Liu’s comments had been “disgusting”.

“The Chinese community does not like to be pigeonholed by ethnicity,” she said. “We should not be presented in the media the way we were in the Guardian. Marginalising people for political gain, misrepresenting the views of the Chinese community is wrong.”

Ms Liu said she was keen to promote and protect the Australia-China relationship if elected, as a “top priority”, attacking Labor over union opposition to the ­Abbott government’s China-­Australia free-trade agreement.

Ms Yang backed Labor’s bipartisan support for the Morrison government’s foreign interference bill, but said she was concerned over the rhetoric used to support it.

Additional reporting: Heidi Han