Call for scrutiny of Chinese donations

THE Tasmanian Liberals have been urged to return $30,000 in donations they received from companies linked to a billionaire Chinese businessman whose Australian permanent residency was reportedly cancelled following an investigation into his political ties and background.

Nine’s newspapers reported yesterday Huang Xiangmo had been stranded overseas after Australian agencies declared him unfit to hold an Australian passport and cancelled his permanent residency. He had lived in Sydney with his family since 2011.

According to those newspapers, Mr Huang was denied a passport for a range of reasons, including on character grounds. He has previously been linked to Chinese government influenced operations in Australia with intelligence agency ASIO warning political parties against taking money from the businessman in 2015.

Jade Fisheries and Chaos- han, both linked to the company Mr Huang chaired until he handed the role to his son last year, Yuhu Group, donated a collective $30,000 to the Tasmanian Liberals in 2016.

Greens leader Cassy O’Connor yesterday called on Premier Will Hodgman to demand his party return the funds to Yuhu Group.

“He cannot, in all good conscience, now claim that money came with no strings attached,” Ms O’Connor said.

“Tasmanians have a right to know whether the Liberals have been bought by Beijing.”

University of Tasmania Chinese studies senior lecturer Mark Harrison said the Tasmanian Liberals “could affirm their commitment to democratic values by being open and transparent about the status of the donation from Mr Huang’s Yuhu group”.

“Donations from Chinese businesspeople into local political parties are a strategy to gain access to the centres of power and decision-making for many reasons,” Professor Harrison said. “They work especially when other avenues of access, which may have been established over many generations in a place like Tasmania, are closed.”

Academic Clive Hamilton last year warned Tasmania’s “uncritical embrace” of Beijing had made it a soft target for the Chinese Communist Party.

The Silent Invasion author warned a packed UTAS auditorium that “for some time a concerted campaign has been under way to extend the Chinese Communist Party’s political influence in Tasmania”.

The State Government and Liberal party state director Sam McQuestin did not respond to questions.