Rudd rallies Labor’s lost Chinese voters

Former PM Kevin Rudd has been recruited to win back Chinese voters lost to Labor in the recent NSW election.

Kevin Rudd campaigns with Chris Gambian during a street walk in Hurstville, Sydney, yesterday. Picture: AAP

Labor has unleashed Kevin Rudd into marginal seats to win back Mandarin-speaking voters who deserted the party following former NSW leader Michael Daley’s disastrous anti-Chinese gaffe.

As polls conducted by leading Chinese-language websites showed Chinese Australians were locking in behind the Coalition, Mr Rudd made flying visits to margina­l seats in NSW and Queensland, attempting to claw back support from local commun­ities ahead of the May 18 election.

Mr Rudd’s election intervention in support of Bill Shorten, touring the seats of Reid, Bennelong, Banks, Barton and Moreton, comes after years of bitterness between­ the pair which culminated in the removal of Mr Rudd as prime minister in 2010.

Mr Shorten was relegated to a parliamentary secretary position after Mr Rudd’s 2007 win, despite hoping for a more prominent cabin­et role. The Opposition Leader switched his loyalties back to Mr Rudd ahead of the 2013 federal­ election, removing Julia Gillard from power.

In a series of Instagram posts, Mr Rudd appears in videos speaking Mandarin with voters, alongside Labor MPs Graham Perrett and Linda Burney, and candidates Brian Owler, Chris Gambian and Sam Crosby.

Mr Rudd waving to admirers during the same tour. Picture: AAP

The five seats have prominent Chinese-Australian communities, and their votes are viewed as crucial­ to winning tight races. Mr Rudd yesterday visited Hurstville, which straddles the Liberal-held marginal seat of Banks and Ms Burney’s Barton electorate.

“Out in Hurstville in Sydney this morning campaigning with Chris Gambian, our candidate in Banks, and Linda Burney the member for Barton. Great react­ion from all the locals we met to both Linda and Chris,” Mr Rudd posted. In all four campaign videos posted on his Instagram account this week, Mr Rudd had his arm around Labor candidates or ­Chinese-speaking voters and speaks only in Mandarin.

Labor strategists fear the four NSW seats could be negatively impacte­d by Labor’s disastrous state campaign in March, in which a video emerged of Mr Daley saying Chinese students were taking the jobs of young Sydneysiders.

The Australian revealed last month that internal party polling had Labor behind in the federal campaign for Banks and Reid as a result of Mr Daley’s comments.

Mr Rudd with Moreton candidate Graham Perrett.

Senior Labor sources said yesterday that Mr Rudd would not appear regularly in the final weeks of the campaign but were grateful for the support, describing his backing as “helpful and constructive”.

Mr Rudd is considered to be popular with Chinese-speaking voters due to his fluency in Mandar­in. The former prime minister­, who is now based in New York, was not a regular face in the 2016 election campaign.

Mr Shorten has tried to bring Mr Rudd back in from the cold, most notably handing him and his wife Therese Rein lifetime membership of the Labor Party at last year’s ALP national conference.

Coalition campaign spokesman Simon Birmingham said the government was happy for Mr Rudd to hit the election trail: “Rudd oversaw budget blowouts, record boat arrivals and disasters such as pink batts and the school hall ripoffs.”

Two online polls, conducted by the Sydney Today Chinese website and Oursteps.com Chinese forum, indicated strong support for the Coalition. The Oursteps poll shows only 19.71 per cent of participants backed Labor, far behind the Coalition (51.22 per cent).

A poll by Sydney Today taken among 1443 Chinese Australian voters showed that 61.54 per cent would vote for the Coalition and 28.41 per cent for Labor.