Daniel Andrews defends ‘outstanding’ staffer linked with China
Daniel Andrews today declared he was “very proud” of one of his staffers, Marty Mei, who has been linked to China’s United Front organisation, branding suggestions of undue influence on his government by Beijing as “nonsense”.
The Australian reported today that Mr Mei was named a “special consultant” to the Shenzhen Association of Australia, which is part of a network of organisations in Australia that is guided by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department.
Mr Andrews, who again refused to release his government’s Belt and Road agreement with China, said Mr Mei was “an outstanding Victorian” who just happened to be of Chinese origin.
“He’s very proud of that, I’m very proud of him. He does a lot of hard work, and the suggestions that were made in the article are a joke, frankly,” the Premier said on the election campaign trail in Melbourne this morning.
“He’s a fine and outstanding person, he is of Chinese background and if there’s something wrong with that, then that’s certainly not my view.”
Asked whether undue influence had been placed on his government, Mr Andrews said: “The answer is no, that’s complete nonsense.”
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has also faced questions this morning over one of his staffers, Kelvin Ho.
Mr Ho and former Liberal Attorney-General Robert Clark attended the same November 2016 event as Mr Mei, which was opened by a senior Communist Party official, Ma Yongzhi, who is vice-minister of the United Work Front Department of Shenzhen.
Asked what Mr Ho’s role was in his office, Mr Guy said: “Kelvin I think has done some voluntary work and some paid work in the past for me. That’s about it.”
“I think he does do some work for us, for the Liberal Party.”
Mr Guy said there were no security issues in relation to Mr Ho or Mr Clark.
“None have ever been raised with me of either of those two individuals and I think it would be comical for anyone to suggest that Robert Clark had been anything other than a very, very patriotic Australian,” he said.
Mr Guy has vowed to release Victoria’s BRI memorandum with China if he wins the November 24 state election.
But Mr Andrews said it was standard practice that such agreements remained confidential.
“It’s a non-binding MOU process and the approach that we’ve taken is exactly consistent with the approach that the Turnbull Government, (the) Morrison government, presumably takes on all of their MOUs,” he said.
Mr Andrews said Victoria had “a very strong, very important economic partnership” with China that was “all about jobs”
“It’s all about more product being exported around the world. If we can, through the infrastructure work that China is involved in offshore, if we can be exporting skills as well as giving business the opportunities to share in all that work, then I think that’s a good thing,” he said.
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