China has No business in our country
For decades, the Chinese have been given open slather on the Gold Coast. We can lead the way by banning future Chinese investment in our city
THE time has come for the Gold Coast City Council and Foreign Investment Review Board to ban Chinese-backed development projects.
As a matter of national security, we must break the umbilical cord with the Chinese Communist Party.
They have no business in this country and the Gold Coast can lead the way by banning future Chinese investment.
As Australians, we abhor the way the Chinese government treats its citizens of Hong Kong and the refugee Uyghur population. It has an abysmal human rights record. Yet we acquiesce to them when the Almighty Dollar is in play.
The Australian Labor Party should hang its head in shame for the way it is dividing Australia over its backing of China.
Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles has shown an extraordinary lack of judgment by cosying up to the Chinese government.
In a speech in 2017, he acknowledged China’s Sovereignty. He even went as far as to endorse China’s right to expand its influence into our region and the South Pacific, offering closer ties with China through joint military exercises.
What was the Chinese government’s reaction to this? China expressed it would be happy to work
It lies, obfuscates and bullies, as seen by its stance on increasing tariffs on Aussie wine, meat, barley and seafood.
with a Labor government.
So why did Marles present his speech to China’s government before going there? He has said that it criticised China and his speech was to repair relationships.
Minister for Home Affairs, Karen Andrews has come out saying that China timed its deal with the Solomons to affect our election. This has been generally dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the media.
But why would China not play this card at this time? China is renowned for playing the long game. It does nothing in the public arena through accident.
There is always more than is clearly visible. Ms Andrews has a point when you consider Labor was quick off the mark to accuse the government of dropping the ball on its watch. Not bad for a stumbling campaign so far.
And yet, rather than being a killer blow, Labor is using duplicity and hypocrisy to suggest it’s the government that has erred badly.
To reconcile this, you have to ask what is the real Labor Party’s position, and is its current rhetoric based on their statement that China has changed? Defence Minister
Peter Dutton has been quick to assure Australians that China remains an aggressive force within the Asia-pacific.
It already has more naval vessels than the United States and is fast creating the world’s biggest naval fleet.
Its diplomacy is rife with bellicose, jingoistic rhetoric. It lies, obfuscates and bullies, as seen by its stance on increasing tariffs on Aussie wine, meat, barley and seafood.
All because we questioned the origin of coronavirus, to ensure such a pandemic doesn’t happen again.
For decades, the Chinese have been given open slather on the Gold Coast. They rorted the tourism opportunities in the 1990s by running their own race, staying at Chinese-sanctioned hotels and shopping at Chinese owned shops.
Their investment money in recent times, especially in the
property industry, has been welcomed.
But not anymore. They disqualify themselves from being part of our culture and lives by being bad actors.
It’s up to the council and Foreign Investment Review Board to put an end to this madness, where they are swallowing up land and development opportunities.
Short-term pain for longterm gain. It’s the only way to deal with their rubbish.
MINISTER Andrews was worried that the Chinese government may be interfering in our election apparently to the disadvantage of her LNP.
Surely the Chinese government would prefer that the current bumbling government remained in charge of our foreign policies. NELSON QUINN, SOUTHPORT
IT is a political tragedy that in this election our energy discussion is still framed around loss and sacrifice when it should be about abundance and opportunity.
The majority of new electricity demand will be met by more community and rooftop solar, which will be cheaper than the electricity transmission lines.
Additionally, recently Green Energy Markets modelled construction job creation by energy options. As an example, jobs created to replace the same energy created at Eraring Power Station is as follows (round figures): rooftop solar 63,000, solar farm 14,000, wind farm 13,000, coal 8,000 and gas 1500 jobs.
The real challenge is fully exploiting this extraordinary natural bounty and there’s a straightforward path – electrify everything.
ANDREW STIMSON, UPPER COOMERA
WHAT is going wrong with the governance of our country?
Once we had a choice of parties with known plans, now it would seem that we, the silent majority, are being held to ransom by a grab bag of so-called independent candidates supported by wealthy people driving their own agendas.
The leader of One Nation is quoted as saying her party would look to punish the Liberals over some perceived wrong.
Even the ALP is seeking to make preference deals in the Senate, and the so-called activists, should they be elected, will seek to disrupt unless their demands are met.
Good governance once again will go out the window, and Australia, that’s us, will suffer. DAVID LISSENDEN, MAIN BEACH
OUR Reserve Bank, which has the solemn duty to keep inflation between 2-3 per cent, has finally woken from its slumber and raised interest rates.
In turn, lenders will hit those paying off a mortgage.
All this during an election campaign.
The party in power, the LNP, shifts all blame to Vlad Putin, supply chain issues, the pandemic, while steering the Australian flagship, HMAS Lollipop in the direction of God Knows Where.