Labor MP Sam Lim invites United Front-linked man to budget

MP Sam Lim’s allocation of four tickets for the budget speech have gone to businessman Fuxin Li, previously named as having a long history of ties to China’s United Front.

Labor MP Sam Lim speaks at a citizenship ceremony at Perth Convention Centre. Picture: Colin Murty

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The Labor MP holding one of the party’s most marginal seats gave a Chinese-born businessman previously linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s arm of foreign influence passes to Tuesday night’s federal budget speech.

A staffer for Sam Lim, who holds the West Australian seat of Tangney by a margin of just 2.4 per cent, advised Parliament House earlier this month that Mr Lim’s allocation of four tickets for the budget speech would be taken by Fuxin Li and his family.

Dr Li, who has repeatedly run unsuccessfully for the ACT Senate as an independent, was previously named as having a long history of ties to China’s United Front Work Department.

Charles Sturt University professor of public ethics Clive Hamilton – whose books Silent Invasion and Hidden Hand investigate China’s attempts at covert influence across Australia and the world – told The Australian that Dr Li had held official positions “in several provincial-level ­United Front groups”.

“The Chinese Communist Party regards its overseas United Front work as its ‘magic weapon’,” Dr Hamilton said.

“One aim is to infiltrate the political process to gather information, influence opinions and get close to leaders.”

Labor MP Sam Lim during a visit to Shanghai by an Australian parliamentary delegation. Picture: supplied

Both Dr Li and Mr Lim’s office were contacted for comment on Friday, but neither had responded at the time of writing.

Each federal MP is allowed to invite up to four guests to attend the budget speech in the House of Representatives galleries.

The ABC in 2022 reported that Dr Li held roles across at least six groups linked to United Front.

It reported that he had been elected as a committee member of the China Association for International Cultural Exchanges with Overseas Chinese, a United Front group whose committee members are only appointed on the recommendation of Chinese government departments or embassies.

Fuxin Li. Picture: supplied

The Canberra-based school he founded, the Australian School of Contemporary Chinese, had also hosted a Chinese culture camp that the ABC said was likely to have been funded at least in part by the Chinese government’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.

At the time of the ABC story, Dr Li reportedly said he was unsure if he was still a member of any of the United Front groups and had not had contact with any of them for “two or three years”. He said he was not working with or for the Chinese government.

“These sorts of memberships (with United Front groups) … they are [memberships of] associations, rather than with a party,” he told the ABC.

Mr Lim’s decision to invite Dr Li came to light after a staffer ­“replied all” on an email from the parliamentary speaker’s office.

Another Labor MP from WA, Zaneta Mascarenhas, also had her guest list distributed throughout parliament by the same means. Among those invited by Ms Mascarenhas, who won the seat of Swan as part of Labor’s decisive 2022 campaign in WA, was Felicity Wade, the national co-convener of the Labor Environment Action Network. Ms Wade has been a strong advocate for the Nature Positive reforms that were twice pulled by the Albanese government after lobbying by WA Premier Roger Cook.

At the time, she was reported as saying she felt “pretty done over” by the withdrawal of the Nature Positive reforms.

“Sadly, vested interests from the west appear to have undermined Labor’s confidence and derailed progress,” she was quoted as saying in The Guardian.

The Liberal Party has been using the prospect of revived Nature Positive reforms in its push to reclaim ground lost in the west at the last federal election.