Saturday, December 7, 2024

Home Affairs & Foreign Interference

Home Policy Spotlight Home Affairs & Foreign Interference

Melbourne Man Charged With Foreign Interference Offence

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The phrase ‘foreign interference‘ often brings to mind the covert meddling into Australian affairs by the Chinese and Russian governments, both the foes of democracy. 

It’s fascinating to observe Australian politicians and the public’s attitude towards Russia and China. We are quick to reprimand Russia for its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, yet our knees wobble when it comes to criticizing the Chinese Communist Party’s mass killing. And the wincing first-hand accounts of Uyghur concentration camp torture is altogether unsettling.  

The human rights abuses continue even now on an industrial scale.

Chinese money is powerful. I hear you. What about human rights? Aren’t they important too?

Liberty Itch has now revealed a pattern of influence-peddling and unrestrained foreign interference by the Chinese Communist Party across Australia, from a violent CCP sycophant assaulting a pro-democracy former legislator in Sydney, to Labor and Coalition politicians sidling-up to Chinese Communist influence in an obsequious display in WA Liberal Leader scurries out the back exit.

Now, the spotlight is on Melbourne and a pivotal foreign interference test case.

Di Sanh “Sunny” Duong, a leader of the Chinese community, is the first individual charged under Australia’s foreign interference laws.

Former Liberal Minister Alan Tudge together with Mr Duong.

The prosecution and the Australian Federal Police claim that Mr. Duong, aged 67, contributed $37,000 in 2020 for the Royal Melbourne Hospital in an attempt to secure influence with former federal minister, Alan Tudge, which might later be used in support of Chinese interests.

Mr. Duong has, on record, written to a politician in the Liberal Party in the past and suggested that Australia should support China’s expansionist Belt and Road Initiative, a project that was subsequently terminated by the Federal Government in 2020 due to national security concerns.

Sarah Kendall, a legal researcher of foreign interference legislation at the University of Queensland, commented that this case illustrates the breadth of the laws. She pointed out how an activity which may seem harmless could be regarded as a criminal offence if the authorities can prove that the conduct had the intent of preparing for foreign interference.

The law is unusual for a liberal democracy in that it requires from the prosecution only that a defendant intends to use current influence in the future for the purposes of foreign interference.

This is a balancing act for a classical liberal.

Liberals want to protect our hard-won freedoms and an expansionary foreign power like the Chinese regime is a threat to those freedoms especially when operating inside Australia. On the other hand, liberals believe in individual freedom of movement, habeas corpus and the rule of law.

Mr. Duong was charged in November 2020 by the Australian Federal Police. He pleaded not guilty in 2022. He denied engagement in any foreign interference activity, despite that he was a leader of Chinese community associations overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department, about which Political Itch has written in China’s Covert Australian Ops.

Magistrate Susan Wakeling determined that there was enough evidence to proceed to trial.

This is the first time a citizen has been charged with facilitating an act of foreign interference, an offence that carries a maximum 10 year imprisonment.

Whatever the result, it will be a critical precedent.

Whether there is a conviction or not, Mr. Duong’s case will be just the first of many. Similar acts of foreign interference have happened and are still happening every day in each Australian state.

How effective are we in defending our democracy? Political Itch will be there when the judgment is handed-down.

Watch this space.

WA Liberal Leader Scurries Out The Back Exit

It’s Lunar New Year this week.

The term Lunar New Year is more accurate than Chinese New Year. The spring festival is not exclusively Chinese but celebrated throughout China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and, yes, here in Australia among communities sharing this heritage.

Liberty Itch strives for accuracy, an appreciation of all cultures which observe Lunar New Year festivities and, as you are well aware, we are not in the habit of bending to the Chinese Communist Party.

Let freedom ring!

So, terminology aside, it’s unfortunate then that the Chinese Communist Party infiltration operations within Australia are in full swing.

Liberty Itch has previously reported on the conviction in Sydney of a violent CCP thug. We’ve reported how Australia’s Taiwan visit sparked ugly CCP sabre-rattling. On these pages, you’ve even read a wincing first-hand account of Uyghur concentration camp torture. We’ve even shared how the CCP coerces Australian residents in our interview, Life as a Political Asylum Seeker in Australia.

Today, our focus is on Perth, Western Australia, and how the CCP is wooing major party politicians there.

Soft-power, you understand.

The Perth Chinese Consulate invited key Western Australian legislators and Commonwealth bureaucrats to their Lunar New Year function. Attendees included the Hon. Sue Ellery MLC, Minister for Finance, Commerce and Women’s Interests from the Australian Labor Party, and the Western Australian Liberal Leader Dr David Honey MLA.

Pro-Beijing, United Front Work Department affiliated organisations – reminder, the UFWD is the Chinese Communist Party’s official propaganda arm – were also present at the function, including the executives and founders from the Chung Wah Association Inc, the CCP Media Perth Post and Australian Chinese Times, the WA Beijing Association, and the Australian Peaceful Unification Association.

Unsurprisingly, given the Chinese regime’s constant civil liberty infractions and growing interference here in Australia, there was a human rights protest self-described as “End CCP” out the front of the consulate.

Political Itch has spoken to a key figure of that protest, Richard Lue. His account is that, at the end of the function, Minister Ellery and Dr Honey sought to avoid the peaceful protesters at the front by taking the back exit. Then, surprised the protesters were documenting the comings and goings from the consulate, Dr Honey ‘ran away quickly’ when he spotted their camera.

WA Leader of the Opposition, Liberal’s Dr Honey takes the back exit

This is not the behaviour of MPs confident of their actions.

Why scurry through the back exit? Why run to avoid the camera?

Would it not have been better for a Minister and a Liberal Leader to boldly walk out the front door and talk with the protesters about their grievances?

Both the Minister and the Liberal Leader were given a red bag by the consulate on departing. Given the CCP has embroiled other politicians in career-ending activities, we thought this at the very least worth questioning.

Political Itch reached out to Labor’s Sue Ellery to ask what was in the red bag and to find out why she took the back exit rather than just hear the protesters’ complaints. Sue Ellery’s office did not respond.

Dr Honey’s office did respond, as follows:

Please give me a call just so I can clarify a few things.

But basically, Dr Honey left via the front door, not via a back or side door and walked directly to his car which was parked on Royal Street.

The red bag he was holding was a party gift bag that was given to all attendees – it contained some low value trinkets etc… (it was a cap, a fan and a poetry book). 

The function was held by the Chinese Embassy to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Political Itch has subsequently received photos from an eyewitness that the Liberal Leader exited the Chinese Communist Party’s Perth Consulate from the back door on Royal Street. The front gate of the Consulate is on Brown Street, not Royal Street, according to the Consulate’s official address.

Whether these politicians exit from the front or back, or whether they receive minor trinkets in a gift bag is not the point, of course.

What is relevant is that our politicians prefer to immerse themselves in the hospitality of an abhorrent regime which regularly abuses human rights, rather than listen to the victims of that regime.

There were so many questions we wanted to ask. One which came to mind was the persecution of Christians in China.

Political Itch took up Dr Honey’s invitation to call multiple times over a two day period. In the absence of a call back, we then wrote the following email to his office:

Dear Sir,

We are unable to get hold of you on the phone.

The answer as to which exit Dr Honey used is in dispute by eyewitnesses.

A follow up question for Dr Honey –

According to ChinaAid’s 2021 Annual Persecution Report, more than 50,000 Christians were arrested in China in the Shanxi Province alone. Will Dr Honey be willing to speak up on behalf of Christians within and outside the Liberal Party and talk to the Perth CCP Consulate about the persecution of Christians in China?

On this more serious question, Dr Honey’s office did not respond.

It would be generous for you, the reader, to conclude that they are all too busy to respond. These are serious issues.

It is more than disappointing that Labor and Liberal politicians in Western Australia hob-nob with the communist elite, operatives who are actively undermining our democracy, but not able to advocate for victims of human rights abuses and persecuted Christians.

Take note. Chinese Communist Party infiltration is deep. Worryingly, WA Labor and Liberal are lulled into forgetting who they represent and are not acting like the principled democratic leaders they should.

FREEDOM! The Daughter of Davos Resigns.

Two extraordinary things happened yesterday.

First, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation effective, at the latest, early in February 2023. (Yes, New Zealanders need to endure her for a few weeks more!)

Second, I put out this short tweet yesterday together with a video of the Prime Minister, and it went viral. In a mere 180 minutes, it was seen by 67,400 people and was still swishing around the globe as I wrote this. After 8 hours, 165,000+!

You have to ask ‘WHY?’

https://twitter.com/KenelmTonkin/status/1615875921638219778?s=20

Jacinda Ardern set a couple of records. She was the youngest female prime minister ever in 2017. Further, she gave birth whilst in office.

Of course, neither of these have anything to do with political achievement.

To be fair, we can probably agree that Jacinda Ardern is expressive.

Some went so far as to say she showed great empathy.

I think it more accurate to say any apparent empathy was self-consciously dispensed and exclusively to beneficiaries of her bias.

Any praise for expressiveness and empathy needs much closer scrutiny. It’s what she expresses that so confounds civil libertarians like you and me. And, if you don’t mind me expressing myself here dear reader, she showed a distinct lack of empathy for many during covid lockdowns, victims of which are generations not yet born as you’ll see. So read on.

Instead, what we observed was a smiling socialist, a Daughter of Davos, instinct over intellect, all feeling and no financial finesse. In short, she was a classical liberal’s nightmare.

Just look at the legacy she leaves after six reckless years in office:

  • Frequent meddling with the free market. The results: distortions in housing prices and a generation of first home buyers shut-out of their ownership aspirations;
  • A backlash against over-zealous covid restrictions and loss of personal freedoms, including creating a medical-apartheid defined by vaccination-status. See the video tweet above;
  • Conscientious objectors and the vaccine-hesitant were shunned socially, denied mobility, prevented from earning a living and targeted by government in ways the Stasi would have relished in Soviet-era East Germany;
  • Consequential increasing crime rates in the island nation;
  • Inflation sitting at 7.2%;
  • Food prices spiking 8.3% compared with the same time a year earlier;
  • Successive interest rate increases from New Zealand’s central bank;
  • A monstrous public debt! When she took office, the public debt was approximately $60 billion USD. Projections are that, based on all data currently available reflecting the decisions of her government, that the national debt will balloon to $151 billion USD by 2027. If the figure proves higher or lower than that, it will be the result of her successor’s policies, but you can see the economic vandalism on her watch. Put it this way, she led a government which racked-up triple the debt of all previous New Zealand governments combined. She went way over the credit card limit and left someone else to pick up the bill. Funny, right?;
  • For a country with a population the size of Boston, it will take three generations at least to bring that debt to heel. We are talking inter-generational theft which will crush Zoomer Kiwis’ standard of living, their children and their grandchildren. That is to say, on the day after you, I and Jacinda Ardern meet our Lord and Maker, New Zealanders will be dealing with the Ardern Economic Catastrophe for another two generations thereafter;
  • Many of them will flee New Zealand and hollow this beautiful jewel of the South Pacific. They have been emigrating anyway, mainly to Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States;
  • A strategic flirtation with the Chinese Communist Party. Her Labour Party has long shunned our liberal democratic ally, America. It was a natural progression from that to openly calling for greater integration with the communists, a weak-kneed strategy in favour of firebrand authoritarianism with a chequebook over the cleansing-balm of liberty;
  • Consistent with that predisposition towards authoritarianism, civil liberties in New Zealand were shattered under her Governments. Emergency powers poised to be invoked again at any time are left in place;
  • Chinese Communist Party infiltration of New Zealand consulates and banks;
  • She openly lied about the efficacy of covid vaccines. “If you take the vaccine, you’ll still get covid but you won’t get sick and you won’t die” was a claim she made during the height of an hysteria of her own making, and contradicted by the science and the manufacturer. Don’t believe me? Watch this …

    https://twitter.com/KenelmTonkin/status/1616211090882592768?s=20


  • More government restrictions on the access and use of water;
  • Crushing regulations on agricultural emissions;
  • Further shifting of the goal posts with hate speech laws without any safeguards as to who adjudicates what ‘hate speech’ actually is.

The adulation and applause had faded about a year ago. The shadowy World Economic Forum’s simping seemed impossibly distant now. Jacinda Ardern had to face the people of New Zealand imminently and the prospects weren’t promising.

With polling numbers in decline and the sparkle now tarnished, the Prime Minister did what all faithful authoritarians and central-planners do when their number is up. She spoke sweetly, smiled nervously, then scurried to the nearest exit hoping that the rule of law she undermined holds firm for her.

I was shocked my tweet went viral. I shouldn’t have been. Countless everyday people across the West, people like you and I, have had a gutful.

The Daughter of Davos was a symbol of all that has gone wrong over the last 3 years. So of course you cheered her departure.

I don’t think we’ll have to wait long before she re-emerges with an ostentatious job title and global brief somewhere in the world. “Poverty Ambassador-At-Large, World Economic Forum”, on $820,000 per annum, Davos chalet and chauffeur the obligatory perks on top sounds about right.

And when that happens, you and I can both smile knowingly that at least here she won’t have harmed anyone further. On her departure from the Land of the Long White Cloud, she will increase the average IQ of New Zealand, and not decrease that of the World Economic Forum.

Pardon me if I shed not a solitary tear.

BREAKING: Violent CCP thug convicted in NSW

Ted Hui

This week, a pro-Beijing self-described ‘spontaneous patriot’ was successfully convicted in a Sydney court of criminal intimidation.

Last August 2022, prominent pro-democracy activist and former Hong-Kong Legislative Councillor, Ted Hui, suffered a politically driven assault and intimidation in Sydney.

Chinese Communist Party supporter, Billy Kwok, influenced by the Chinese government’s propagandist apps WeChat and Weibo, was not happy with Mr. Hui’s pro-democracy advocacy. So, he decided to take matters into his own hands and used violence to handle a political difference of opinion.

The police officially charged Mr. Kwok in September 2022, but the case was delayed due to ‘mental health’ grounds.

These delays were overcome and, this week, a Sydney court found him guilty on two counts of criminal intimidation, handing-down both a community service order of 12 months and a $500 fine.

On hearing the verdict, Mr. Hui said, “This successful prosecution sends two important messages to the community. Firstly, all people in Australia have the right to express their political views freely. This must be respected.”

“Secondly, pro-Beijing people need to understand that they cannot use violence against any person, just because they have a different political persuasion. The rule of law underpins the way Australian society is governed”, he continued.

Liberty Itch praises Mr. Hui for his courage and tenacity in defending Australian free speech and fighting for democracy in Hong Kong.

China’s Covert Australian Ops

The Chinese Communist Party’s public diplomacy programs in Australia look innocent enough.

From the delightful Wang Wang and Funi Event at the Adelaide Zoo, to the partially CCP-subsidised OzAsia Festival, from the more recent Chinese Music Performance at the Adelaide Town Hall to the ‘Chinese Singing Competition’ held at a South Australian university campus. Chinese culture is on display.

This is Adelaide alone. Such activities are rolled-out across the country and world.

These are simply ‘Chinese culture’, correct? These public diplomacy projects participated in by Chinese Government officials are permissible in a democracy such as ours, right?

Well, yes. But to a point.

It’s understandable for a foreign government to attempt to build relationships with individuals in other countries in order to cultivate a good reputation and win international backing for its ambitions.

However, multiple red lights flash when a foreign government is authoritarian, interferes with the domestic political discourse of a host country, and runs coordinated, covert operations for propagandist purposes.

The alarm bells ring.

This is especially true if the foreign government is currently engaging in aggressive expansionism, has a ‘Wolf Warrior diplomacy’ and has a notoriously shocking track-record when it comes to human rights.

Liberty Itch is gathering evidence of questionable tactics currently being used by Beijing in Australia to manipulate our political system and institutions in various sectors. Once our research is complete, we’ll share it with subscribers.

What Liberty Itch can say for certain is that much of this manipulation is managed and coordinated by an organisation called the United Front Work Department, a political body that aims to work on individuals and groups overseas to advance the CCP’s interests.

Again, instances will be revealed in future exposés on Liberty Itch. For now, we reveal themes and tactics which have emerged in their modus operandi.

In Australia, they are:

  1. Providing financial incentives to lure Australian politicians into backing their views;
  2. Appointing former politicians to well-paid consulting roles;
  3. Lavishing funds on Australian university institutes that show unwavering support for the CCP’s policies;
  4. Enticing Australian citizens and business owners with, first, useful connections and, subsequently, financial benefits;
  5. Drawing-in influential people from Chinese diaspora groups to assist with local infiltration;
  6. Targeting promising, younger Australian politicians whom they regard as having longer-term potential to ascend the heights of Australian political and corporate life over time;
  7. Sending CCP-endorsed candidates to run for local councils and state parliaments;
  8. Interfering in Australian elections by coordinating Chinese-owned Australian property investment companies and Chinese students to engage in ballot-harvesting;
  9. Disseminating propagandist communication with the implicit threat they can muster Chinese-Australian voters to punish incumbent politicians electorally if they don’t publicly support CCP policies;
  10. Infiltrating local Chinese community organisations or, where not possible, launching new competing groups, thereby giving the illusion of Chinese-Australian community backing; and
  11. Intimidating Australians and their elected officials for expressing negative views on China.

Next time you attend a local Chinese community event or cultural performance (with the exception of the worthy Shen Yun), be sure to be observant, particularly if representatives from the Chinese Government are present. Your interactions, acquaintances, and relationships at the event will be studied. The United Front Work Department is interested in knowing who is connected to whom in the local community and work on relationships that can be developed and leveraged to advance the CCP infiltration agenda.

For more on how the CCP ‘study’ their own citizens, read Man Who Chanted “CCP, Step Down”, Arrested and Disappeared!

To discover how the CCP applies pressure on Hongkonger freedom-fighters living in Australia, go to the interview Life as a Political Asylum Seeker in Australia.