The Liberal’s China syndrome
The Liberal Party ran disastrous on the ground campaigns against Labor in electorates with large Chinese-Australian populations. Swings against the Liberals in key seats in Sydney and Melbourne were far greater than the national average. Have cynical campaigns not just marginalized voters of Chinese heritage but also non-Chinese voters in once Liberal heartland?
The adage in Australian politics is that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. Facing a cost-of-living crisis the moment he was elected, by last year, the polls showed voters had had enough and were ready to turf prime minister Anthony Albanese out.
Months out from the election this one was Albanese’s to lose; instead, Peter Dutton and the LNP (Liberal National Party) lost it and lost it badly. Despite running hard, key seats in Sydney and Melbourne, with large Chinese-Australian populations, are among those where the LNP was hit hardest.
Chinese-Australians abandon Liberal Party
The Perth seat of Tangney, Sydney metropolitan seats of Reid and Bennelong, and Chisholm in Melbourne were all comfortably retained by Labor with swings well above the national average of 2.8 percent. In Tangney the swing to Labor’s Sam Lim was 4.9 percent; Carina Garland who picked up Chisolm from the LNP in 2002, increased her vote by 4.6 percent; Sally Sitou achieved a swing of 7.5 percent in Reid; while Jerome Laxale who was sitting on a wafer-thin margin of less than one percent had a swing of 13.5 percent in a once rock-solid Liberal seat.
In the Melbourne seat of Menzies, with one of the highest proportions of Chinese-Australian voters, high rising Liberal Party light, Keith Wolahan suffered a loss after his rival Gabriel Ng picked up a 3.3 percent swing to Labor. Deakin, another Melbourne seat with a high Chinese-Australian vote was lost by, former LNP Housing Minister, Michael Sukkar, with a swing of 2.1 percent to Labor’s Matt Gregg.
Banks in Sydney’s south, with a voting population of around 20 percent Chinese was lost by Liberal shadow minister for foreign affairs, David Coleman. The seat was picked up by Zhi Soon with a 4.6 percent swing to Labor. Soon is Chinese-Malaysian by origin; a former staffer to prime minister Kevin Rudd, in 20008 he was named ACT Young Australian of the Year.
He had a number of Labor luminaries, including Rudd and Albanese, join him on what proved to be a successful grass roots campaign. Unlike Liberal candidates in electorates with high numbers of Chinese-Australians, he was seen on the hustings with senior Labor figures, not at expensive fundraising events.
In the Liberal seats of Bradfield and Berowra on Sydney’s north shore, with significant proportions of Chinese-Australian voters there were two-party preferred swings of 5 percent against the LNP. Berowra is now held by the LNP with a slim margin. The likely outcome in Bradfield—where they faced a strong independent in Nicolette Boele—is a Liberal hold by only a handful of votes. However, there may be a re-count that goes against the Liberals.
Howard country is now Labor heartland
When, then prime minister, John Howard lost the 2007 federal election he lost his seat of Bennelong to high profile Labor candidate Maxine McKew. He narrowly beat McKew by 143 votes on first preferences, with Labor getting over the line on preferences.
When Howard led the Liberals into government in 1996, defeating sitting Labor prime minister Paul Keating, he had more than 60 percent of the two-party preferred vote. On Saturday, sitting Labor MP Jerome Laxale, who scraped home on Greens Party preferences in 2022, captured over 59 percent of the two-party vote.
Since Howard was first elected to the seat in 1974, the demographics have changed with a large influx of Chinese born Australians and those of Chinese heritage. Today 29 percent of the population of the electorate is Chinese-Australian. These voters were won over by former tennis champion, John Alexander, who held the seat for the Liberals from 2010 until his retirement in 2022.
The Liberals regarded Chinese-Australians on Sydney’s north shore as natural conservatives who flocked towards a party they saw as pro-small business and better economic managers, that had the right policies to protect investments and retirement savings.
At the 2022 federal election many abandoned the LNP because of, what was seen as, the “Morrison effect”. Then prime minister Scott Morrison was a leader they saw as divisive and anti-China, who made no attempt to differentiate the Chinese in Australia with the Chinese communist government to which he adopted an overtly aggressive stance.
A redistribution of the electoral boundaries in October 2024 made Bennelong notionally Liberal, yet the Dutton-led LNP sent Liberal voters away in droves.
The right candidate with the wrong backers
The Liberals preselected 32-year-old Scott Yung to run in Bennelong, a likeable candidate with a high profile in the local Chinese community; his parents are from Hong Kong and mainland China.
So where, and how, did it all go wrong? Says Kingsley Liu, a former Greens candidate for the House of Representatives and founder of the Asian Australian Lawyers Association, “You can’t lay all the blame at the feet of Scott Yung. The Liberal Party machine demanded blind loyalty from its candidate without loyalty to the issues of concern to his community such as racism and constant allegations of foreign interference.”
Another question is to what extent did non-Chinese voters view the choice of Yung as a cynical attempt to win over voters lost by Morrison in 2022. According to Liu, “Even though he’s now a local, Yung has run for the Liberal Party in the state seat of Kogarah. One must ask to what extent did non-Chinese voters in Bennelong feel that he was parachuted in because of his ethnicity?”
Two days out from the election, a paid video from Yung was posted on, Chinese social media platform, WeChat where he said he does not “blindly follow” instructions from above.
While ten days before the election, Yung addressed unfounded allegations of loyalty to Beijing by appearing on the Straight Talk podcast, hosted by financier Mark Bouris. It was an awkward, and clearly pre-scripted question, where Bouris asked: “You’re not a communist are you?” When introducing Yung to his podcast, there was no disclosure by either participant that Yung was once employed by Bouris. It was a free hit to Yung on a platform with little if any Chinese-Australian viewers that clearly didn’t help his election chances.
Privately Yung was telling supporters throughout the election campaign that he was being mentored by John Howard.
That Howard—who lost a seat the Liberals had never lost and was associated with the 1988 policy to limit Asian immigration—was Yung’s mentor is quizzical.
Dutton also showed up at Chinese community events, while, the China hawk former prime minister, Tony Abbott made appearances at Bennelong campaign events. Despite a cumulative figure of likely millions of dollars the LNP has collected from Chinese-Australian supporters over recent years, it seems Dutton, Howard and Abbott were unable to grasp the idea that when it comes to politics Chinese-Australians are overwhelmingly interested in just one thing, having their photographs taken with politicians— $200 and $300 a plate dinners do not translate into votes.
The damage in Bennelong was already done before the polls opened last Saturday. Last week it was reported that members of the, fringe Christian sect, Exclusive Brethren were heading out how to votes for the Liberals at pre-polling stations, including for Yung in Bennelong. It was a desperate party move and a clear indication they knew they were in trouble.
All of the party backing Yung received translated into the Liberal’s lowest ever primary vote in Bennelong, ten percent lower than Howard when he lost the seat in 2007.
What were they thinking in Reid?
The Liberal’s choice of Chinese-Australian Grange Chung as its candidate for the inner western Sydney seat of Reid had the smell of the LNP head office hanging over it from day one. Says Liu, “Chung was the wrong candidate, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Chung ticked all of the boxes for the party’s leadership but few, if any, for the local community. He’s ex-military, having also worked for military contractor Jacobs, so he’s cleared all the national security hurdles. He appeared to have made himself a small target, not setting up a campaign website. Instead, his only messaging was through social media.
Chung posted photos of himself with Tony Abbott; images with Dutton at Sydney’s Eater Show; and a video endorsement from senator Dave Sharma, who has almost no recognition in Reid, and who lost the safe Liberal seat of Wentworth to independent Allegra Spender at the 2022 election. Also on the roster were LNP figures Warren Mundine and federal front bencher Michalia Cash.
In perhaps the most ill-conceived stunt of any LNP candidate in this election, Chung invited the nation’s most deeply anti-China politician, and “wolverine”, Victorian Liberal senator, James Paterson to campaign on his behalf.
Paterson even handed out how-to-votes at pre-polling booths. Most voters would not have known who Paterson was, and those who did know would almost certainly have been put off by his presence.
Says Liu, “Rather than seeking endorsement from his community, he brought in senior Liberal figures with questionable, or no, records of supporting the Chinese community.”
When Chung addressed the Chinese community directly it was through a fear campaign with a video on WeChat claiming that Labor was the sole party responsible for the White Australia policy. “It’s a deliberately blurred line”, says Liu, “between citing a deeply racist historical policy and suggesting it belongs to a party that didn’t exist when the Immigration Restriction Act—the White Australia Policy—was enacted in 1901.”
The Chinese community is not run by spies
When it comes to Chinese-Australian voters the LNP is in tatters and appears to have implemented nothing from the party review following the 2022 election loss, that stated, “Rebuilding the Party’s relationship with the Chinese community must be a priority during this term of Parliament.”
The co-author of that review, Victorian senator Jane Hume has done a stellar job in alienating the Chinese Australian community. In the final week of the election campaign she accused Labor of employing “Chinese spies” to work on its polling booths. Her unfounded allegations were directed at Chinese community members working on pre-polls for Labor minister Clare O’Neil.
Video of her comments were carried widely across Chinese social media platforms Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and Weixin (WeChat). It clearly worked against the Liberal cause; at the very least it would have solidified the decision of Chinese-Australians who weren’t going to vote Liberal anyway.
What the Liberals, and Labor to a lesser extent, fail to grasp is that ordinary Chinese-Australians are not impressed with “top-level” interactions between their community leaders and Australian political leaders.
Such interactions are viewed cynically by many in the community for what they are, individuals—who have every right to do so—advancing their personal interests. It doesn’t sway the perceptions the wider Chinese community has of politicians.
The mistakes the LNP made and, if recent history is any indication, are guaranteed to keep on making, is that they make no effort to understand the needs of the wider community and the motives of those whom they directly interact with.
In a perverse way, the LNP takes money from rich Chinese business and community leaders then distance themselves from their generous donors when the mainstream media makes totally unfounded accusations of those donors engaging in acts foreign interference.
The real act of interference is that top-level LNP politicians are using the leaders of Chinese community groups—of which there are hundreds—to exert influence over their members to vote Liberal.
A long march back
The LNP remains enthusiastically supportive of AUKUS, a deal which many Chinese-Australians strongly oppose; in the final leaders’ debate of the election campaign Dutton unambiguously identified China as our biggest security threat; on top of that LNP politicians are always quick to question the loyalties of Chinese-Australians. These are issues which do not resonate across the broader electorate anywhere near the extent to which they alienate Chinese-Australians.
Writing in Crikey, UTS professor Wanning Sun succinctly summed up the failings of the LNP, saying, “Dutton wanted the Chinese-Australian vote… and the anti-China vote. It screwed his candidates.” Dutton is certain to never return to the parliament, how many Chinese-Australians will never return to the LNP?
May 9, 2025 By Marcus Reubenstein
（APAC Business Review）
*The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of chillicomment Weekly