NSW election: ALP takes out ad in Chinese Daily as race row engulfs Daley

Michael Daley takes out a front page ad in the Australian Chinese Daily as the ALP seeks to limit the damage from the racism row.

NSW Labor leader Michael Daley, in Sydney yesterday, was described by Premier Gladys Berejiklian as ‘two-faced’. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Labor leader Michael Daley has taken out a front page advertisement in the Australian Chinese Daily as the Labor party seeks to limit the damage from Mr Daley’s comments on Asian immigration ahead of Saturday’s poll.

In the advertisement, Mr Daley and his family are pictured and it reads: “Michael Daley and Labor. Put education and health before stadium revamp. Put people first.”

The Australian understands the Liberal Party had planned for two months to drop the damaging video of Mr Daley in the last week of the campaign.

In the video, Mr Daley is suggesting Asians with PhDs were taking Anglo Australians’ jobs at a politics in the pub event in the Blue Mountains.

He has apologised to those offended by the comments and said that he was referring to the issue of housing affordability.

Michael Daley's ad in the Australian Chinese Daily. Picture; Australian Chinese Daily.

The racism row engulfing ­Mr Daley has prompted one of his Labor frontbenchers to speak directly to the Chinese community against xenophobia.

As the Opposition Leader was dubbed “racist’’ by his political ­opponents yesterday, his water spokesman, Chris Minns, took to WeChat, a popular Chinese social media platform, to differentiate himself from Mr Daley.

Mr Daley was forced to apologise yesterday for remarks made last year that Asian immig­rants were “taking the jobs” of young Australians. In the video, posted to YouTube in September, Mr Daley is heard saying: “Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with?

“They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs. There’s a transform­ation happening in Sydney now where our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in and taking their jobs.’’

Don’t worry @michaeldaleyMP I stole an Australian newsreaders job without a PhD. We will take all the jobs regardless of our education.

— Lee Lin Chin (@LeeLinChin) March 19, 2019

Scott Morrison said Mr Daley’s comments were “outrageous” and called on Bill Shorten to denounce the NSW Labor leader.

“Mr Daley has basically said that Asians take Australian jobs, and I just find that abhorrent with all the talk recently about these issues (like racism),” he told ABC radio.

“I denounce those comments and I call on Bill Shorten to do the same.”

The emergence of the video of Mr Daley addressing a politics-in-the-pub function in the Blue Mountains swamped Labor’s campaign as he struggled to divert focus away from suggestions he was anti-immigration and repeatedly fended off suggestions his comments were racist or hypo­critical. He conceded his “language could have been better” and said, “no offence was meant, and I hope none has been taken’’.

Mr Minns, who ran against Mr Daley for the Labor leadership late last year, said on WeChat: “Michael Daley has said he made a mistake talking about Asian immigra­tion in that way. He has also apologised for causing offenc­e. I want to make clear I love my community because of its wonderful Chinese character and heritage, not despite it.”

The statement, written in Mandarin and English, detailed Mr Minns’s contribution to the Chinese community in Australia.

 

He went on to say his advocacy on behalf of the Chinese communi­ty had earned him the moniker “Ho Chi Minns” among his critics and he was “regularly ­attacked” by right-wing anti-­immigration groups for being a “Chinese collaborator”.

Gladys Berejiklian seized on the video, describing Mr Daley as “two-faced” after it emerged he had praised immigration at a special Chinese forum he had organised at Parliament House. “It is rank hypocrisy. A two-faced leader can’t even be honest with the people he’s talking to. NSW deserves better than that,” she said.

Multiculturalism Minister Ray Williams used a special press ­conference at an inner-city Chinese restaurant to attack Mr Daley.

Mr Williams told members of the Australian and Chinese media that Mr Daley had “driven a sword” through the heart of the community. “He is saying people of Asian and Chinese background shouldn’t be successful in this country,” he said.

It comes as latest polling has the government and the opposition running neck and neck.

The YouGov-Galaxy survey, published in today’s Daily Telegraph, shows the major parties are split at 50 per cent each on a two-party preferred basis.

Ye Xue, a 28-year-old international relations PhD student at the Univer­sity of Sydney, said he had never felt discriminated against in Australia but now felt unwelcome after hearing Mr Daley’s comments. “(Mr Daley’s comments) are discriminatory … and they shock me, because I don’t think those should be words from a serious politician,” Mr Xue told The Australian. “I love the weather and the natural beauty of Australia.” Mr Xue who grew up in Chengdu, in southwest China, said he wanted to stay in Australia once he finished his PhD.

Mr Xue also studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, but he said he chose Australia because of the beautiful environment, the people and the weather.

Solicitor Ivan Hung said Mr Daley’s comments “undermine how society operates”.

“Everyone wants to live in a better suburb. We all work hard for it,” he said.

“What makes Michael Daley’s kids better than my kids in terms of being able to live in a particular area? If you’re good at what you’re doing you earn more and you get the opportunity to live in a better suburb.”

Mr Hung arrived in Australia from Hong Kong with his family in 1988, and after completing his law degree, founded his own legal firm, TY Lawyers, which is based on Sydney’s north shore. “I’ve been raised here to work hard, earn a living, and raise a family of my own. There’s nothing Asian about working hard,” the father of two told The Australian.

He also criticised Mr Daley’s defence of his comments in the video as being “economic not xenophobic”.

“If we change the race to being an ‘American with a PhD’, is that better? Is that no longer an economic issue?”

Mr Daley tried to explain his comments when issuing his apology. “They (Asian immigrants) are welcome to come to Sydney, and I’ve said that. I said it’s not a bad thing that Asian kids are coming to work here,” he said.

“It’s a bad thing because I’d like my daughter and others like her to remain here. So the issue is housing affordability — the issue is that young people can’t afford to live here. They’re leaving.”

Greens MP for Newtown Jennie Leong condemned Mr Daley’s comments as “racist crap”.

“Michael Daley’s comments today were beyond belief for me, they were disgusting,” said Ms Leong.

“We thought we got rid of Mr ‘white flight’ from the NSW Labor Party, and instead we have Michael Daley narrowcasting a dog whistling, racist message.”

But Mr Minns also used his WeChat statement to call-out the Berejiklian government’s “breathtaking hypocrisy” over the video.

“They have been running around with John Howard for the last week on the campaign even though John Howard is famous for stating that there should be a reduction in ‘Asian immigration’.”

In November last year Mr Minns made a bid for NSW Labor’s leadership at a special caucus meeting after Luke Foley stepped down over sexual assault allegations. In the worst day of Labor’s campaign to date, Mr Daley yesterday conceded he “got it wrong” when he accused the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust of “ripping out” the stadium’s fire sprinklers under the cover of darkness.

In an interview with Ben Fordham yesterday, Mr Daley blamed the error on incorrect information he had received before the now-infamous interview with broadcaster Alan Jones, in which he said he would fire him and the rest of the SCG Trust should he be elected premier on March 23.

Mr Daley told reporters yesterday he had received a letter from a member of the SCG Trust threatening defamation action.

Ms Berejiklian has also been vocal about the impact of high-immigration rates on Sydney, calling for a cut in numbers to allow infrastructure to catch up.

In October, she called for immigration to NSW to be halved, from about 100,000 a year to Howard government-era levels of 45,000, to allow the state to catch up on infrastructure needs and ­relieve congestion.

Additional reporting: Olivia Caisley, Brad Norington, Sascha O’Sullivan, Elias Visontay