There was no smear on Chinese Australians, just a search for answers

Extract from The Guardian

Katharine Murphy on politics

Gladys Liu

The PM mustered up outrage on behalf of Gladys Liu and the brutal arithmetic of parliament means he must now dig in

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Sat 14 Sep 2019 06.00 AEST Last modified on Sat 14 Sep 2019 06.40 AEST

Scott Morrison deployed race as a means of trying to turn the bonfire back on Labor over its questions about the Liberal MP Gladys Liu. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

There was a moment during Scott Morrison’s press conference on Thursday – the one where he attempted to dissuade journalists and Labor from asking inconvenient questions about the member for Chisholm, Gladys Liu – when I suddenly visualised Paul Hogan, and smothered a mad impulse to laugh.
The prime minister felt that everyone just needed to take a deep breath. The only thing to see here, Morrison soothed from his podium in the Blue Room, was a rookie Liberal MP, a political novice, who shouldn’t have gone on the Bolt Report. In case you don’t tune in regularly to Andrew (and shame on you), this was the interview where Liu had declined to criticise Chinese activity in the South China Sea and couldn’t recall whether she was a member China Overseas Exchange Association between 2003 and 2015.
“I think the problem here is Gladys Liu has given a clumsy interview,” Morrison said. “That is all that’s happened here.”

The reverie was fleeting, but listening to this, I found myself suspended in that scene from Crocodile Dundee where the Paul Hogan character strides from his ramshackle four-wheel drive and subdues a water buffalo intent on charging him. This quasi-mystical incident is explained as “mind over matter, an old bushman’s trick,” by the character played by John Meillon, with a big knowing wink to the audience.
While Hogan and the animal wranglers on the Dundee set subdued their beast, Morrison had less success. The snorting buffalo of the fourth estate and the non-government forces in the parliament wasn’t hushed, and the questions about Liu kept on coming – as they should.
When the attempted Blue Room hypnosis didn’t have the desired effect, and the day rolled relentlessly through to question time, Morrison then deployed race as a means of trying to turn the bonfire back on his opponents.
When the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, pursued questions about Liu in the House, the prime minister thundered: “Just because someone was born in China doesn’t make them disloyal. What the member for Isaacs is doing is casting a smear on Chinese Australians.” Just in case the Chinese community missed the Morrison memo that Labor were grubby smear merchants intent on calumny and crass insult, the prime minister popped up on WeChat with a “standing up for all Chinese Australians” video by Thursday night.
Was it Churchill who counselled never to waste a good crisis? It doesn’t matter, frankly, whether the rapid-fire crisis management was inspired by Churchill, or Morrison’s social media team, or the Liberal party’s federal director, Andrew Hirst – let’s be very clear here.
Nobody had suggested at any point that being Chinese-born meant a person was automatically suspect. The only person who contributed that incendiary thought to the debate was Morrison, when he thought attack was the best form of defence.
There was no smear on Chinese Australians. There was a specific question about one member of parliament that went to Morrison’s direct experience and responsibilities. “Did the prime minister receive any advice about the current member for Chisholm from government agencies before or since the 18 May election?”
Morrison declined to answer the question on the basis that responsible prime ministers don’t stand up at the dispatch box and read their Asio briefings into the Hansard. This “cannot be done”, the prime minister informed the chamber, as if explaining an immutable law of physics.
Now of course I understand why responsible prime ministers don’t routinely read Asio briefings into the Hansard, but governments are perfectly capable of injecting sensitive material into the public domain that they want to be there. If you are inclined to take issue with this observation, to see it as the caustic raving of a woman who has already confessed to having a daydream about Paul Hogan, just ask the outgoing Asio boss, Duncan Lewis, who was moved to complain to a Senate committee about the practice.
Sticking with clarity, let’s be clear, too, about the practical effect of the prime ministerial no comment in response to Dreyfus’s question: we don’t know whether or not agencies have raised issues about Liu.
The Herald Sun, which has been pursuing questions about Liu and her connections diligently for weeks, reported on Thursday that “men in grey suits” had warned a senior Liberal party official in Victoria that there were concerns about her links to the Chinese Communist party. The view reported to have been expressed about the preselection by the spooks was: “We can’t tell you what to do but we don’t think it would be a good idea.”
The journalists – all good reporters with strong track records in news breaking and analysis – insist three sources validate this account. The former Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger (who would have overseen Liu’s preselection) says no one raised any security concerns with him. “I’ve never met anyone from Asio in my life,” Kroger declared on Thursday.
It is genuinely difficult to sift provable fact from contention with this story for two reasons. Self-evidently, Asio is not in the habit of confirming or denying its activities – although it’s fair to note that agencies have been active, when it suits them, in shaping perceptions, both within the political class and with the public, of foreign interference (read Chinese influence activities), which is being presented to the public as nothing short of a new cold war.
The second problem in puncturing the “he said she said” is the Victorian Liberal party is riven, and hand-to-hand combat and proxy wars between the various self-styled overlords and their squalling understudies and acolytes is not uncommon. The question we ask ourselves as reporters is are these narrators reliable?
So pulling back from those complexities, and looking at the sum of the week – we have been invited by the prime minister to conclude that everything is absolutely hunky dory with Gladys Liu, because of course the Liberal party couldn’t have preselected a person who was the subject of persistent security interest, and of course the prime minister wouldn’t defend such a person if that had occurred.
Now forgive my natural scepticism, but a couple of counterfactuals spring naturally to mind. The section 44 debacle shows the preselection vetting processes in all Australian political parties have been much more lax than we thought them to be, particularly in seats where candidates don’t expect to win.
Liu, as a prolific fundraiser, and a person who had failed in previous preselection bids in Victoria, might have been owed Chisholm in 2019 (given that’s the way politics works) – and bear in mind the Liberals did not think they would win that seat in May. Liu only just fell over the line.
As well as pointing out the bleeding obvious – political parties are absolutely capable of preselecting problematic candidates, and declaring everything is fine (remember Malcolm Turnbull, and Barnaby Joyce, and the high court would “so hold” he was eligible) – Morrison governs in the lower house with a one-seat majority.
Again, projecting us into politics as it is rather than some mythological ideal state where everything runs like clockwork and everyone always does the right thing, what choice does a prime minister with a one-seat majority feel he has but to dig in and stoutly defend a member it would be deeply inconvenient to lose?
So where do we land after all this? Liu, of course, is absolutely entitled to measured, considered and, dare we say, respectful treatment and a presumption of innocence. But the Australian voting public is also entitled to some straight answers.