The Coalition has accused Labor of “sewer tactics” over what Josh Frydenberg described as a “racist” attack ad targeting Liberal Gladys Liu, that accuses the Chisholm MP of spreading fake news and trying to trick voters at the previous election.
But Labor frontbencher Penny Wong has rubbished claims her party was vilifying Liu, saying there were “legitimate” questions over her conduct.
It comes as the Coalition faces intensifying scrutiny over claims it fumbled Australia’s relationship with Solomon Islands and the new security pact with China, with Labor hinting it would boost foreign aid and diplomatic efforts in the Pacific.
The Age reported on Sunday that Labor would use Facebook, Google, YouTube and Instagram ads asking voters “what do we know about Liberal Gladys Liu?”
“She spread fake news on Chinese messaging apps, she and the Liberal Party had to give back $300,000 because the donors were deemed a national security risk, and her campaign tried to trick voters with election day signage in the colours of the Australian Electoral Commission,” the Labor ad said, according to The Age.
Liu holds the Victorian seat of Chisholm on a razor-thin margin of 0.5%, winning by less than 1,100 votes in 2019. Labor views Chisholm as a major prospect in its hunt for seats to claim majority government.
The ad refers to previous reporting on the MP, including that the Liberal Party returned more than $300,000 received through fundraising auctions at a 2015 event for Liu. The money – pledged for dinners with then-PM Malcolm Turnbull, foreign minister Julie Bishop and Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy – was returned after “security concerns” were reportedly raised in relation to the winning bidders.
In 2019, the Liberal Party came under fire for placing posters at polling places on election day in similar colours to official AEC material. The signs, used in seven electorates in Victoria said, according to an English translation, that the “correct way to vote” was to put 1 next to the Liberal candidate.
That year, Labor raised questions over the Hong-Kong born Liu’s membership of Chinese organisations linked to the Communist party. At the time, Morrison called the opposition pressure a “smear”.
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Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, under pressure in his own seat of Kooyong, called Labor’s latest campaign on Liu “a desperate, dishonest, racist attack ad”.
“The Labor party here is being dishonest, deceitful and engaging in scare tactics and in a racist attack ad on the first Chinese-born person to sit in the House of Representatives in Gladys Liu,” he said on Sunday.
Morrison, speaking in Alice Springs, was also scathing of Labor’s ad.
“They go after Gladys Liu because she’s Chinese,” he said.
“They’re engaged in what I think is a sewer tactic here.”
Morrison again pointed to prior criticism of Labor deputy leader Richard Marles, who provided the Chinese embassy in Canberra with an advance copy of a speech he was to give to the Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2019.
Marles said this week his actions were a “courtesy” and that none of his speech was changed after it was provided to Chinese officials.
“It’s a desperate ploy by a Labor party opposition who has been caught out actually running their own policies and speeches past the Chinese government,” Morrison said of the ad.
But Wong vehemently denied the ad was unfair.
Also speaking in Alice Springs, when asked by a journalist if Labor was “vilifying” Chinese-Australians, Wong – who was born in Malaysia – responded “you’re asking me that question?”
“A number of these issues were raised a few years ago in parliament and I can remember my then-counterpart, Senator [Mathias] Cormann, accusing me and others of attacking Ms Liu because of her ethnic heritage, which is not the case,” Wong said.
“I think there were questions that she should have answered then, and it is legitimate for those to be answered.”
Wong, Labor’s shadow foreign minister, has called the Coalition’s actions around the Solomons-China security pact “the worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of world war two”. She linked the criticisms of the Labor ad to mounting pressure on the Coalition.
“Let’s not fall for the increasingly shrill and desperate attacks from the other side. On Mr Morrison’s watch,” Wong said.
“We have a security pact in the Pacific for the first time in Australia’s history, since world war two, and that has demonstrably made the region less secure and Australia less secure.”
On the ABC’s Insiders program, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said Australia had to “earn the friendship” of Pacific neighbours by being “meaningful partners” on the climate crisis and development assistance. When asked by host David Speers if that meant Labor would pledge greater amounts of foreign aid than the Coalition currently, Chalmers did not rule it out.
“We’ll have more to say about [foreign aid] during the course of the election, as Penny Wong has made clear. That’s an important part of the story, but it’s not the whole story,” Chalmers said.
Wong also hinted toward greater spending from Labor in that area.
“You should anticipate to see more resources and more energy from the Labor government in the Pacific,” she said.
“What we have to do is secure our region … We wouldn’t have cut foreign aid and development assistance, which is important to development and national security, by almost $12bn, which is what the Coalition has done. We wouldn’t have cut bilateral aid to the Solomon Islands.”
“I do think there is a different approach. Do I think this is easy? It is not. It is serious business which is why it should not be the subject of shrill scare campaigns.”