Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Accountability) | Hansard source

But he is highly experienced at defending the indefensible. We've seen that over the course of his entire career and, in fact, before he came into politics, when he was at the tourism board. Of course, his own preselection raised many questions in the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party.

The truth that we need to recognise is that Australians of Chinese descent love Australia. They love this country, they love being here and they love living here, and this is because they have a direct comparison with the way of life that they experienced as younger people. That is why they love living here. They love our freedom. They are very realistic about the government in the country from which they came, which doesn't offer its own citizens the same freedoms that they have here, although the Prime Minister seems to think otherwise—an ignorant view and a typically simplistic view from the least qualified, worst credentialed, most clueless Prime Minister on foreign policy in our history. The only thing in all of this that gives me comfort is knowing that there are many Liberal MPs who see our foreign policy and our role in the region with much more realism than the Prime Minister does. They worry about his delusional view and they worry about Ms Liu the most.

In amongst Ms Liu's other questionable behaviour, the latest of which we saw today, is Ms Liu offering references in exchange for being 'volunteers' on her campaign—that is, she was going to give people references if they volunteered. But do you know what Victorian Liberals have been hearing about since Ms Liu gave that interview on Andrew Bolt's program and what they are most concerned about? They are most concerned that Ms Liu has passed on electoral role or data feedback to another state actor. The people who live in Melbourne in the Chinese Australian community are concerned that their information is being passed on to the Chinese government and the CCP. And the reason they are concerned about that is that they make their own money there, and they would like to bring that money here. They have to declare how much money they are moving out of the country, and this has been recently tightened by the CCP. What has happened is they might declare that they're taking some of their money out, but, in fact, they are living in residences that are of far higher value. Those Chinese Australians are concerned that their electoral information—where they reside here—is being passed back to the CCP, and the problem with that is, of course, that a lot of these people still have family members in China and those people are in danger of being detained.

The reason we did not pass the extradition treaty with China was that we know there is a system of collective responsibility in China. So even if they can't reach the person who is now a citizen of Australia, those people still have families back in China. And, of course, we've recently seen on some of the Australian university campuses that this has been a significant issue. Senator McKenzie talked about Ms Liu's activities in her local community and that she worked closely with the local community. That's true, and that local community is now very concerned that their private details are being shared in an inappropriate way.

The creation of victimhood status around Ms Liu is unbelievable. Instead of acknowledging that Ms Liu is up to her neck in this, Mr Morrison, now with the backing of the CCP, is running interference for Ms Liu by claiming that she's done nothing wrong and that everyone is out to get her because of her ethnicity. This is patently false. As Senator Patrick has pointed out—and as I pointed out earlier in the week—there is no way that our security agencies would be passing on their concerns to a political party about a potential candidate up for preselection unless they had valid concerns. If anyone is suggesting that the former Director-General of ASIO is racist, then they are making a grave mistake. It is actually totally inappropriate for someone to suggest that our security agencies act with anything at their heart other than the very best interests of this country. They would not have made that visit lightly; they would not have done that lightly and taken that course of action lightly. They did it because they were concerned about Ms Liu.

There are many other concerns that people have about Ms Liu, apart from what's gone on in the past week where, firstly, she failed to declare her membership of wings of the Chinese government propaganda machine, memberships she had for over a decade. Secondly, she denied she was ever a member of them, before backflipping and saying she didn't know how her name got on these lists. Thirdly, she bragged to colleagues about raising more than $1 million for the Liberal Party, before it was exposed that large amounts of this went undeclared. And, fourthly, she then denied having to return $300,000 in donations. We also know the security agencies made contact with office holders in the Victorian Liberal Party about her nefarious associations. She was pre-selected anyway. We also know that she lobbied for the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party to ease foreign investment laws. And now we have today's story about her offering references to volunteers for her campaign.

We know that Mr Morrison knew all of this, because we know, from the Victorian Liberal Party, that at fundraisers Ms Liu had raised issues of Chinese foreign policy. What I would say is that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and we now know what Prime Minister Morrison's standards are: (1) he repeats foreign propaganda lines, not even thinking through their implications for our national security; (2) he permits his own backbenchers to raise millions from sources so dubious that they cause justifiable panic from security agencies; and (3) he falsely presents criticism as racism, despite having a history of being willing to engage in the very worst form of race-baiting himself.

We have a Prime Minister who is turning a blind eye to a monstrous scandal, and in the process he has revealed himself to be a—I was going to say a 'dupe', but you might say that's a breach of standing order 193, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, so I will instead say he has proven himself to be ignorant of foreign policy concerns. What I would say is that you don't know what you don't know, and there are more things that will come out about Ms Liu. I will leave it there.