Kristina Keneally ‘foolish on meeting China apologist’

Kristina Keneally has been branded as ‘foolish’ and ‘beyond naive’ for meeting with the head of one of China’s top propaganda groups in Australia.

Kristina Keneally with Ly Hung in Cabramatta in Sydney’s southwest last week.

Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally has been branded as “foolish” and “beyond naive” for meeting with the head of one of China’s top propaganda groups in Australia.

Senator Keneally, who would head Australia’s national security apparatus under an Albanese government, said she was unaware when she met Ly Hung last week that he was the president of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China.

The ACPPRC has strong links to the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign influence arm, the United Front Work Department.

It was previously headed by billionaire property developer Huang Xiangmo, who was closely linked to the downfall of Labor’s Sam Dastyari and later had his Australian visa cancelled on national security grounds.

Senator Keneally, who will stand for the western Sydney seat of Fowler at the next election, said she met Mr Ly in Cabramatta in Sydney’s west in his capacity as president of the ­Australian Chinese Teochew Association.

She defended her right to meet community represen­tatives in her prospective seat.

“I did not know that. I must say, he is the head of the Teochew Association in Fowler. I am going to talk to the local community in Fowler,” Senator Keneally said on Wednesday.

“And as the Labor candidate for Fowler, I am not going to shy away from engaging with community groups that represent people, Australians, from multicultural backgrounds.

“I have had no information coming from national security agencies subsequent to my meeting that there was any risk at all.”

Mr Ly, who came to Australia as a Chinese-Vietnamese refugee in 1979, has in the past donated several thousand dollars to ALP candidates.

He became president of the ACPPRC in August 2018, less than a year after Mr Huang stepped down from the role.

Charles Sturt University professor Clive Hamilton, who has written two books on CCP foreign influence operations, said the ACPPRC was “the most ­blatant CCP front group in Australia, bar none”.

He said politicians from ­either side of politics should have learned after the Dastyari scandal that the ACPPRC should be avoided at all costs.

“It is beyond naivete. It’s foolishness, particularly for an aspiring home affairs minister,” Professor Hamilton said.

“She has just demonstrated that she is not suited to running a department that deals with ­national security.

“Any Labor or Liberal MP invited to a Chinese community function should say to their staff, ‘Just check out this group, this person, and make sure they are kosher’.”

A senior government source said it was a “shocking lapse” by Senator Keneally, who sits on parliament’s intelligence and security committee.

“This is someone who wants to run ASIO,” the source said.

“Members of the intelligence and security committee have been warned about the dangers of meeting with United Front figures, and have been encouraged to do their own due diligence before accepting meetings because of the risk of unwittingly giving status to these people.”