Who is bankrolling the Australian Labor Party?

I just came across this disturbing piece originally published in the Winter 2009 edition of The Independent Australian:

Labor's Chinese Mates - Big Donors

Now that Chinese government-owned enterprises are bidding to buy into Australian resource companies at rock-bottom prices, perhaps it’s time to note the Chinese connection in donations to the ALP. Last year,  the largest political donation to the ALP was made by China-based entrepreneur Stanley Ho, who gave the party $800,000. Ho’s fourth wife, Angela Leong, attempted to donate a further $500,000 but the Federal ALP returned the donation, according to the Australian Electoral Commission records. No reason was given.

The $800,000 from Ho was made up of $200,000 from him and $600,000 from Hungtat Worldwide of which he is chairman. The company owns the Palm Meadows golf course on the Gold Coast and is involved in several developments in Queensland. A spokesman for Hungtat said ‘The money comes from China….They have to use an Australian company to make the donations …as long as it is for the Labor Party we are happy to donate’ (The Australian Financial Review 3/2/09).

The NSW ALP also accepted a cheque for $400,000 from Stanley Ho but returned a further donation of $600,000 from Hungtat Worldwide. The State branch general secretary Matt Thistlethwaite claimed the donation was returned because the State ALP had sufficient funds to finance its expenditure at the time. This sounds barely plausible. A political party knocking back a huge donation? Perhaps there was a fear that Mr Ho’s generosity and that of his associated company would lead to a perception that he was buying shares in the party. However, the NSW ALP did accept some $1.4 million in donations from Mr Ho and his associates. 

Mr Anthony Chan, who is listed at the same Hong Kong address as Mr Ho, donated $100,000 to the NSW Labor Party. Mr Ho, who appears in Forbes magazine list of the 100 richest people in the world, was the highest bidder at a NSW ALP fund raiser in 2006, paying $48,000 for the opportunity to lunch with the State Premier Morris Iemma.  However, he didn’t bother to  show up to collect his prize. 

In 1986, Mr Ho was deemed ‘unsuitable’ to hold a casino licence in NSW when he was part of a consortium involved in a bid for a share of the gambling market. Instead of granting a second casino licence the NSW Government of Morris Iemma extended its exclusivity agreement with the Tabcorp owned Star City Casino at Darling Harbour. Hong Kong Kingston Investments were also happy to donate $281,000. 

Ian Tang, head of Beijing Aust China Technology, based in China paid for 16 visits by ALP politicians to China before the last federal election. Tang’s subsidiary company, Beijing Aust China Investment and Development Pty Ltd paid for Mr Rudd to visit China in 2006 with a side trip to USA, Britain and Sudan on the way. In the same year, Mr Rudd spoke at a ceremony in Beijing to unveil a $1.3 billion retail development. Tang paid for  Wayne Swan to travel to China and Hong Kong and for Tony Burke (then Shadow Minister for Immigration) to take multiple trips. On the day Tony Burke flew out of Sydney bound for Manila, Beijing and Hong Kong at Tang’s expense (8 days) Tang’s company made a $59,000 donation to the Australian Labor Party. Tang’s company made two more donations to the NSW State ALP the following month, in total $94,000. 

The NSW ALP is so anxious to remain on good terms with Chinese residents of Sydney that it has a full time liaison officer devoted to keeping in touch with them.  There are a number of inner urban seats - both State and Federal - in which Chinese Australians are concentrated (including Bennelong). Their votes can make the difference between the ALP holding the seats or losing them to the Coalition. 

Similarly the NSW ALP has maintained close links with Muslim community - particularly Lebanese - who are concentrated in several seats. They have provided the foot soldiers for branch-stacking but the community at large lacks the financial clout that the Chinese bring to the table. 

Is democracy really served by these deals between political parties and ethnic lobby groups? There is always a price to be paid by governments for this form of support. Immigration issues are prominent - relaxing rules in favour of individuals or groups, or changing regulations to admit more of a particular ethnic group while banging on about the wonders of multiculturalism. Without admitting of course that  multiculturalism has a become a tool for vote buying. 

The Chinese of course are involved in  other issues. When Chinese state-owned enterprises want to buy into Australian minerals producers or telecommunications providers they and the Chinese Embassy can always whip up support from the resident overseas Chinese community for their agenda. As the federal Opposition have found out, any doubts about the wisdom of Chinese takeovers or investments are countered with cries of ‘racism’, ‘jingoism’ and ‘fears of the old ‘yellow peril’. 

And who is first off the block with these allegations? Labor MPs and Ministers who have been the beneficiaries of free travel in China, courtesy of the Chinese lobby.

Just how compromised is the Australian Labor Party?

Gillard's broken promises

Peter Wilkinson of The Independent Australian writes:

Gillard is untrustworthy, true to the traditional ALP ‘whatever it takes’. However, in these days of the media concentrating on the moment, public opinion is fickle and tends to forget broken promises. Unless there are more stuff-ups like the Carr fiasco the ALP will improve before the next election. The Coalition has had it too easy, too early.

...

Broken Promises

To satisfy the Greens Gillard had to break her promise not to introduce a carbon tax. (There is no evidence that she is a liar, it is entirely credible that she was not going to introduce a carbon if the ALP had a clear majority, given her efforts to get Rudd to drop his ETS.) This site has argued for a carbon tax, but at a lesser level. As a result of Greens pressure it has been set too high.

Before the election she made it quite clear she was opposed to homosexual marriage. When the crunch came at the ALP conference she did not speak against the motion that made homosexual marriage ALP policy. Instead she slid away by getting a deal done to make a vote a conscience vote.

Conscious of a swelling public disquiet with Rudd’s Big Australia policy with record immigration, before the election she said she did not believe in a big Australia. However the Government quietly budgeted for a 20,000 increase in 2011/12 over 2010/11. So the Government is canceling out the effect of the carbon tax and more by increasing the population by not much short of 200,000 pa. There is no creditable scenario which has Australia reaching the target of 5% reduction by 2020 of the energy consumption in 2000 with Gillard immigration policies. Abrupt dumping of schemes to reduce household consumption, such as the pink batts and the solar hot water schemes, show that Gillard’s long term vision is not 2020.

She made a deal with independent Andrew Wilkie to do something about problem gamblers. As soon as she had inveigled the then Coalition member Peter Slipper into the Chair and didn’t need Wilkie’s vote, she shuffled off the simple plan of lower value feeds or slower spin in favour of a ridiculous trial of letting problem gamblers set their own limits.

Somewhere there was talk of amending the Constitution and a select (carefully selected!) group has made over the top recommendations. All too hard, quietly postponed.

Labor dismantles Australia's borders and sovereignty

Andrew Bolt:

Two more in a day - which makes eight in just one week:

AUTHORITIES have intercepted two boats in Australian waters carrying almost 200 suspected asylum seekers.

That’s another 740 boat people in a week. The doors are wide open, and the Government has given up.

Given up? That would imply that the ALP did actually try to stem the tide. This is not the case.

The argument frequently used against Labor is that they have "lost" control of Australia's borders, with the imputation being that the present immigration crisis is a product of their gross incompetence. In reality, the truth is far more egregious. The immigration tsunami, both illegal and legal, rolling over Australia was not some sort of clumsy accident. It was not some unintended consequence unwittingly unleashed upon us. Rather, it was deliberate and calculated move on behalf of the ALP. Since coming to power, the ALP has purposely set out to dismantle our borders and erode our national sovereignty. For instance, the ALP deliberately dismantled the relatively effective border protection regime put in place by the Howard Government, thereby opening the country up to the current influx of illegals masquerading as refugees. They also deliberately increased legal immigration levels to record highs, despite the lack of any sound reason - economic or otherwise - for such a huge increase in immigration

It seems the only miscalculation made by the ALP was in underestimating the public's aversion to more immigration, both illegal and legal.

Jack Lang on White Australia

Former ALP heavyweight and NSW Premier Jack Lang in his 1956 autobiography:

White Australia ... was Australia's Magna Carta. Without that policy, this country would have been lost long ere this. It would have been engulfed in an Asian tidal wave. There would have been no need for the Japanese to invade this country. ...

Even the United States has had to wrestle with the problems of Jim Crowism, racial segregation and color discrimination. Labor didn't want this country to have similar problems. Had we listened to the do-gooders and the crusaders for international brotherhood and racial equality, the barriers would have come down long ago. Our living standard would have been destroyed. We would have had intermarriages of races, half-castes and quarter-castes with all the social dilemmas that invariably follow such racial mixtures. We would have had a Black, Brown and Brindle streak right through every strata[sic] of our society. Instead we ... decided to keep this country as a citadel of the white peoples. Australia is still White Australia thanks to those who battled against those who wanted to exploit colored labor for their own ends. We must keep it that way.

For most of the 20 Century, the Australian Labor Party championed White Australia. These days, the Australian Labor Party champions Non-White Australia.

Labor of yesteryear

"Do the multi-racialists want Australia to consist of a small number of people from all the African and Asian nations, or do they want to admit millions of coloured migrants from those nations for permanent settlement in a continent that was first settled 184 years ago by Europeans while other, nearer nations passed it by as a useless, barren land? If Australians are ever foolish enough to open their gates in a significant way to people other than Europeans, they will soon find themselves fighting desperately to stop the nation from being flooded by hordes of non-integratables. Then we will also need a Race Relations Board. None is needed now. A Race Relations Board is necessary only where there are racial problems and racial tensions. We are currently spared this rather expensive luxury."

— Former Labor leader Arthur Calwell, in his 1972 memoirs.