Changing face of a suburb

As Julia Gillard prepares Australia to embrace the ''Asian Century'', Jim O'Rourke visits Hurstville, where the Chinese are already embracing Australia - and have become the economic and social driving forces of the community.

• Jim O'Rourke

• 
  

AUGUST 5 2012

In a bustling Sydney suburb just a few kilometres south-west of Sydney Airport, the sounds of Chinese dialects ring along the narrow, main shopping street.

Just 20 years ago the shops near Hurstville railway station in Forest Road were owned by people with names such as Smith, Politis or Scardilli. Now the names Lee, Chen and Wu dominate the streetscape.

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Enterprise ... above from left, Carmen Cheung, 17, Dion Li, 12 and Joanna Wang, 15, and at the Lucy Dancing School. Photo: Simon Alekna

Figures from the 2011 census show that Hurstville is the most Chinese suburb in Sydney. In a population of 26,000, close to 8900 people were born in mainland China. Another 1200 have arrived from Hong Kong. Hurstville has just 8200 Australian-born residents.

Twenty years ago a language teacher from southern China landed alone in Sydney carrying one piece of luggage and the germ of an idea to make his fortune. Justin Wang, now a wealthy property developer, sells more than 100 apartments a month in the area - most of them off the plan and most of them to local Chinese.

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The recent surge in Chinese migration is a boon for entrepreneurs like Mr Wang, the founder of the Property Investors Alliance in Burwood.

Mr Wang, who advises about 3000 clients - 95 per cent of whom are local Chinese - said the rapid increase of the middle-class in China in the last decade has added to the bonanza for property developers here as the Chinese search out offshore investment opportunities.He said most of his clients are Chinese couples, aged 25 to 35, who originally came to Australia to study but decided to stay and make a life here. About a quarter of them get a financial helping hand from their parents back in China to get into their first home.

''The first priority for the Chinese is to settle down and buy their first home. In the Chinese culture you should have these things sorted out by the time [you] are 30.

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Burwood property developer Justin Wang. Photo: Lee Besford

''They don't want to invest in stocks and bonds, they want to put their money into a safe asset that gives them a good return. They want something tangible and don't care if it's a long term 10- or 15-year prospect.''

If the Chinese did not invest their money in property, Mr Wang said, many of the smaller to medium-sized complexes he helps develop would never get past the planning stage. ''The banks would never have lent the developers the money without Chinese buyers purchasing off the plan.''

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Councillor Nancy Lui. Photo: Simon Alekna

China is now our second largest source of immigrants, behind New Zealand. Last financial year more than 14,600 Chinese settlers arrived on our shores, many of them opting to live in Sydney communities including Hurstville, Burwood, Eastwood, Epping and Chatswood that are are already dominated by their countrymen.

Last year the Prime Minister commissioned the Asian Century white paper to examine likely economic, political and strategic changes in the region and what more can be done to position Australia to take advantage of those changes.

A recent forum on the white paper at the Australian National University was told by Treasury official David Gruen there is ''almost certainty'' China's economy will outpace developed countries in the years to come due to a ''changing of the guard between the advanced world and Asia'' as economic output shifts to emerging markets.

The white paper was scheduled to be released mid-2012.

Hurstville chamber of commerce president Matthew Matthews said that decades ago the suburb was populated predominantly by Australians with a large mix of European migrants from Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia.

Mr Matthews, a local real estate agent, said the commercial properties in Forest Road were owned by Australians. The Jewish people had the clothing outlets.

''Shop ownership now is swinging completely to the Chinese,'' he said.

''And they like to buy apartments near the shopping centre and the railway station. If the suburb doesn't have a train station, you don't have the Chinese. It helps them get their children to high school or university.''

One of the state's top ranked public high schools, St George Girls High - it was ranked 12th in NSW in the NAPLAN results for year 7 and 9 - is just two rail stops away, at Kogarah. About 88 per cent of the students come from homes where English is a second language. Of those, 58 per cent are of Chinese background. The school's annual report said of the 180 students who sat the HSC in 2011, all received offers to university. Close to 30 per cent chose business, commerce or economics courses.

Mr Matthews said the Chinese like to buy or build homes with four or five bedrooms to encourage their children to remain at home while they attend university.

Lucy Lu, was a ballerina with the Shanghai Ballet Company before she emigrated alone to Australia 14 years ago after touring here in 1996. Soon after arriving she opened The Lucy Dancing School at Carlton, a suburb just east of Hurstville.

As well as teaching classical ballet and contemporary dance Ms Lu, now married with two sons, has classes in Chinese folk dancing. Parents want to see their children keep in touch with their Chinese roots, she said. ''When I arrived in Sydney I studied at the Royal Academy of Dance here and I wanted to open my school before I turned 30. I also studied English and a small business management course at TAFE. The Chinese work hard at the beginning. My mother told me when I was young that you have to have things settled before you turn 30, otherwise too late.''

Nancy Liu was elected on to Hurstville Council in 2008 eight years after arriving in Sydney as part of the ''skilled migrant'' scheme with her husband and a daughter from Guangzhou. She had an economics degree and studied English before decided to emigrate ''while we were still young''.

After the couple set up a business consultancy and travel agency in Hurstville, Councillor Liu noticed the local Chinese were hampered by language barriers when it came to having a community voice. She ran for council on the Unity Party ticket.

''They found it hard to deal with the different layers of government,'' she said. ''While I represent all the ratepayers in Hurstville the Chinese come to me for help.

''Most Chinese people are humble, they work so hard and sometimes don't care what government is doing.''

Australian Government Loves The Chinese---The People Dont

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Behind Confucius Classrooms: the Chinese government agency teaching NSW school students

 

• Kelsey Munro

   
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NSW public schools are being paid at least $10,000 a year by a Chinese government body to offer its Chinese language and culture courses, and some  schools make it compulsory to attend. 

Despite concerns over the appropriateness of outsourcing public school lesson time to a foreign government body, the state government expanded the program - known as Confucius Classrooms - to a further six schools in late 2015. an f

In 2004 the Chinese Government established a program called the Confucius Institutes that has now found its way into Australian Schools.

One Chinese-Australian parent, whose son is at a school where attendance at the Confucius Classrooms program is compulsory from kindergarten to year 2, said it was akin to "the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party into the NSW public school system". 

Confucius Classrooms are administered by the Confucius Institute, headquartered in Beijing's agency known colloquially as Hanban, the Office of the Chinese Language Council. 

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Carole Lu, pictured with her daughter Georgia, is worried about the secrecy surrounding the Chinese government's program of Confucius Classrooms in NSW schools.  Photo: Peter Rae

In an attractive package for cash-strapped public school principals eager to offer their students Asian languages, the NSW schools are paid $10,000 in the first year for teaching resources, and supplied with "teaching assistants" who are hired and paid by Hanban in China. Jean Zhang from the Confucius Institute at La Trobe University which runs the program in Victoria, said in addition to $10,000 upfront cash, participating schools received 50,000 yuan ($10,598) worth of "books or cultural material" each year. 

There are no other foreign language programs paid for by foreign governments in NSW schools. Sydney resident Carole Lu, from Taiwan, says she avoided enrolling her seven-year-old daughter in a school that offered Confucius Classrooms and instead teaches her Chinese at home because of her concerns about the program. 

"It's quite shocking to us," she says. "Everything the teachers have learnt, their background is communism. ... That is the thing I'm really worried about. I don't want her to be involved in any of the ideology of the Communist Party."

Ms Lu questions how topics that are routinely censored by the Chinese Communist Party would be handled in the classes, and dislikes the program's use of the simplified Chinese alphabet over traditional characters that are still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. 

"Individual people, parents, we think it's not right, but it's really hard," she says. "Don't worry, we're not going to have a revolution. It's simply about the education of our children.  The whole environment is going against what we're saying. What can we do?"

Officially, the Confucius Institutes are non-profit public institutions promoting Chinese language and culture worldwide. Since their inception in 2004, many Australian universities have opened a Confucius Institute. ​

But they are viewed uneasily by some China watchers. Hanban is headed by a government official, the Vice-Minister of Education, and since 2014 about eight universities worldwide have closed Confucius Institutes after deciding they were too closely directed by Beijing, restricted academic freedom or even - in the case of Japan's Osaka Sangyo University - for allegedly providing a front for espionage.

These classes might be free to Treasury, but they are paid for by exposing children to a foreign government's propaganda machine.

David Shoebridge

And in late 2014, the Toronto School Board scrapped its Confucius Classrooms program due to concerns about its connection with the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda aims, where topics including Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square student massacre, Tibet, the Uighurs and Taiwan are highly sensitive. 

Independent China expert Professor Jocelyn Chey of the University of Sydney said: "One might say that if a school program is 'just teaching language', it could not be political, but with Chinese everything is political."

Former Greens MLC John Kaye, who died this month, put questions to the Education Minister in Parliament in December last year about oversight of Confucius Classrooms. 

The minister refused to answer questions about payments, teacher hiring, the government's memorandum of understanding with Hanban or bureaucrats' trips to China, but said oversight of Confucius Classrooms was the responsibility of individual principals. Department teachers are supposed to be present during classes, but it was not revealed how many are fluent in Chinese.

"These classes might be free to Treasury, but they are paid for by exposing children to a foreign government's propaganda machine," said David Shoebridge, the Greens' acting education spokesman. "Most Confucius Classrooms operate with no department official having any idea what is being taught or how disputed issues such as human rights and contested territories are handled." He said the government should follow Toronto's lead and replace teachers on the Chinese government payroll with teachers accredited in NSW for Chinese classes. 

A spokesman for the Education Department did not answer questions about whether it was appropriate for a Chinese government body to run classes in NSW public schools. 

"The Confucius Institute aims to improve students' understanding of Chinese language and culture, and facilitates partner school relationships with China," he said.

"The teaching assistants complete a Working with Children Check and mandatory training, and their salaries are paid by Confucius Institute headquarters.

"Should controversial issues or politically sensitive topics arise, they are dealt with in the same way as they would be in other subject areas, ie teachers ensure students are aware of all the points of view."

The Chinese embassy referred the Herald's questions to Hanban, and attempts to contact Hanban were unsuccessful. 

The Confucius Classrooms are now offered at four primary schools: Chatswood, Kensington, Hurstville South and Rouse Hill; and nine high schools: Coffs Harbour, Fort Street, Kingsgrove North, Mosman, Rooty Hill, Bonnyrigg, Chatswood, Concord and Homebush Boys. The program has also been offered at two Sydney private schools, Wenona and King's School.  

Liberal Fentanyl Drug Dirt Smears Christy Clark Campaign [Who's Talking China Connections?]

Fentanyl victim's mother slams Chinese drug [Fentanyl] importer's B.C. Liberal connection

NICK EAGLAND
More from Nick Eagland

Published on: May 3, 2017  

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The mother of a fentanyl victim is questioning why a B.C. politician brought a relative facing a serious fentanyl-related criminal charge onto the campaign trail.

Kasimir (Kaz) Tyabji-Sandana, of Calgary, was arrested and charged in 2015 with importing a controlled substance after police intercepted a package marked as a muffler from China at Vancouver’s International Mail Centre.

The parcel was addressed to someone in Calgary and contained 122 grams of pure fentanyl, the synthetic opioid detected in about 61 per cent of the 1,278 illicit-drug overdose deaths in B.C. between Jan. 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017.

Tyabji-Sandana has been free on bail since late 2015. The charge has yet to be proven in court and a five-day trial is set for Sept. 11.

In recent months, Mathew Wilson, the B.C. Liberal candidate for the Powell River-Sunshine Coast riding, has been spotted campaigning with Tyabji-Sandana, who is his stepbrother.

Tyabji-Sandana has been actively supporting Wilson’s campaign on his public Facebook page, encouraging people to post Wilson’s lawn signs and offering to sell tickets to one of his campaign events. Wilson’s campaign Facebook page shows photos of the two attending campaign events together since the Liberals announced his candidacy in November.

This does not sit well with Michelle Jansen, whose 20-year-old son Brandon died in March 2016 of a fentanyl overdose at the Sunshine Coast Health Centre, a private addiction-treatment centre in the riding.

“I think it’s a slap in the face,” Jansen said. “I think it demonstrates (B.C. Liberal leader) Christy Clark’s leadership. She speaks out of both sides of her mouth.”

Jansen said she felt Tyabji-Sandana’s involvement with Wilson’s campaign demonstrated the party’s “flagrant disregard for the importance of the fentanyl crisis.”

She then slammed the Liberals for their failure to deliver on a 2013 election promise to “create an additional 500 addictions spaces in the province by 2017,” which the party later delayed to the end of 2017 (the party announced all 500 were ready a week before the election launched.)

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Jansen said Tyabji-Sandana should not be connected to the campaign while facing fentanyl charges, which she believes is offensive to the grieving families of overdose victims.

“To know that this is going on right where my son died is hurtful,” Jansen said. “I think he should step back.”

Wilson’s campaign office provided an emailed statement in response to an interview request: “Our hearts go out to Ms. Jansen, who is dealing with a terrible loss. Of course, Kaz is supporting his stepbrother, as is the rest of Mathew Wilson’s family, and hundreds of other members of our community. We won’t be commenting further on a legal matter that’s before the courts.”

Asked whether it was appropriate for Wilson to have an accused fentanyl importer working on his campaign, B.C. NDP candidate Mike Farnworth, the former justice critic, said he was most concerned with how the B.C. government has handled the overdose crisis in general.

“These are obviously serious charges. They will be addressed in court. If he’s found guilty, then there’s serious consequences facing him,” Farnworth said.

“To me, the real issue is the fentanyl crisis itself in this campaign and the lack of response – the late response – by the government on too many occasions.”

Wilson is the son of Gordon Wilson, who was leader of the B.C. Liberals from 1987 to 1993 and currently has a $150,000 government gig as an advocate for B.C.’s liquefied natural gas industry.

Gordon Wilson’s wife and Tyabji-Sandana’s mother is Judi Tyabji, who was a Liberal and later independent MLA from 1991 to 1996 and recently wrote a biography of Christy Clark.

neagland@postmedia.com

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with file from Canadian Press