Labor abandons Chinese voters following election rout

As Labor’s review pointed to swing against it by Chinese-Australians, the party appears to have deserted those voters.

Labor appears to have abandoned its WeChat channels. Picture: Supplied

An ALP election campaign review has found “Chinese-Australian voters swung against Labor in strongly contested seats” as the party appears to have deserted those voters right after the election following the party’s months-long efforts to appeal the community via Chinese social media WeChat.

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The Australian can reveal that Labor’s official WeChat accounts “Australian Labor Party” and “Bill Shorten and Labor” had not been updated since the eve of the Election Day.

Both were major platforms for the party to publish news and policies, campaign messages and to engage with Mandarin-speaking voters dating back as early as June 2016.

Labor had run heavy campaign activities on WeChat, including daily updates and five WeChat-based Q&A Live chat sessions hosted by Bill Shorten, Penny Wong, Chris Bowen and other candidates to engage with Chinese-Australian voters.

Labor candidate for Victoria’s marginal seat of Chisholm Jennifer Yang is the only Labor candidate who officially published a farewell message on WeChat to thank all the Chinese Australian voters, supporters and volunteers.

It appears that another of Labor’s prolific WeChat users, Reid candidate Sam Crosby, deregistered his official account after the election.

Labor’s Sam Crosby failed in his bid to secure Reid. Picture: AAP

It comes as one of the 26 ALP review recommendations encourages Labor to “develop a coherent strategy for engaging more fully with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, including Chinese-Australians”.

“The election review confirms what Chinese-Australian ALP members have saying. It is clear the party at both levels — federal and state — need to realise the challenge it faces in engaging appropriately with the Chinese community and needs to act,” Chinese-Australian Labor member, Cumberland councillor Kun Huang told The Australian.

The Australian first reported Australia’s Mandarin-speaking voters’ desertion of Labor leading to the May election based on multiple online polls conducted by popular Chinese media in Australia.

In early May, three Chinese media online polls, conducted respectively by the Sydney Today Chinese website, Oursteps.com Chinese forum, and 1688.com.au, indicated strong support for the Coalition, with each poll conducted among thousands of claimed eligible voters across the nation.

Labor’s Chisholm candidate Jennifer Yang. Picture: AFP

Kun Huang and many other fellow Chinese-Australian Labor members have also expressed their concerns and called for cultural reform in a submit to Michael Lavarch’s review into the NSW Labor’s head office following a corruption inquiry around an illegal donation by a Chinese property developer.

“We believe failures of governance and to comply with the law has many causes, but with respect to the Chinese-Australian aspects of this scandal, the transactional culture within the party promoted individuals on the basis of their ability to raise money, rather than a broader set of capabilities,” according to the submission obtained by The Australian.

“This stands in contrast to an approach that would more readily nurture deep roots and meaningful relationships in the wider Chinese-Australian community.”

The group also called the reform adopting a “data-driven understanding” of the cultural diversity of our party membership, and “the genuine consideration of targets” for cultural and ethnic diversity for both elected and unelected roles.