China links expose flawed disclosure law

Premier Mark McGowan was too quick to shoot the messenger last week and look for excuses around issues confronting Labor MP Pierre Yang.

Yang admitted that for the sake of complete transparency he should have disclosed his memberships of two Perth-based Chinese organisations suspected of promoting the policies of the country’s ruling Communist Party.

He said he was unaware of the apparent political links to his native China and overlooked his memberships when filing his annual return paperwork for Parliament.

When feeling the heat from the media, Yang did not try to hide behind the foibles of the outdated and oblique disclosure laws of the State that foolishly allow an MP to use his or her discretion when listing their affiliations.

The Premier, who must set the standard for his colleagues, should have just backed Yang’s contrition and drawn a line under the issue rather than accusing the media of “slur and innuendo” and slamming reporters for doing their jobs.

Agreeing with Yang that he should have declared the associations would hardly have been seen as executing the Upper House MP for South Metropolitan, who by all accounts is a very decent and upright citizen.

But McGowan embraced the wriggle room defence and that is concerning.

His Government came to power with a policy to modernise the lax disclosure legislation around political donations, for example, so that the public does not have to wait for the once-a-year declarations to know whose money is funding political parties.

In Opposition, Labor banged the transparency drum loudly.

Its policy is titled “Disclosure and Democracy in the Digital Age”, but McGowan has done nothing so far to progress it in Government.

During his strident defence of Yang last week, the Premier clearly signalled that he sees the disclosure laws for individual MPs as satisfactory.

“It’s discretionary on your parliamentary disclosures what you put on there,” he said.

That needs to change and the Premier should be pushing for more exposure rather than relying on grey areas of governance when it suits.

McGowan even attempted to compare being a member of the RSPCA — and his failure to declare that fact — with Yang leaving off his membership of groups accused of being politically active in Perth for the Chinese Government.

Premier, you are not that naive.

What also emerged in the reporting around the Yang affair were claims that the Left faction MP was stacking party branches with ethnic Chinese and that it was clearly causing angst to members of Labor’s Right.

This allegation was not being fuelled by slur and innuendo from the media.

According to WA Labor president and powerful Left convenor Carolyn Smith, it was coming from within her own party and was being driven partly by “xenophobia”.

That Smith would go on the record and make those comments publicly was telling.

Of course, students of political history in WA would remember this is not the first time a brawl over ethnic branch stacking has occurred within Labor. As a minister in the Carpenter government, McGowan famously described former Labor MP John D’Orazio of being “the worst ethnic branch stacker” in the party’s history.

But in all the noise and controversy surrounding Yang, McGowan did make a valid point about the China syndrome that Australia seems to wrestle with on an almost daily basis.

How close can you get to the communist superpower, which is our biggest trading partner, before you are seen to be too close? This is the China paradox.

“It is the country we rely on most for jobs and opportunities in Australia,” the Premier said. “In WA, we sell on annual basis $60 billion worth of products from here and buy $4 billion worth of products. Our prosperity is intimately linked to our relationship to China.”

He pointed out that the Australian Government supports the One China policy that acknowledges Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China.

McGowan might argue that before one MP is singled out for scrutiny, there is a much bigger picture in play, including the quite deliberate steps his and previous State governments have taken to forge ties with China.

In 2011, then premier Colin Barnett signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China to promote “investment co-operation”.

The document, obtained by The West Australian, was far more than a fluffy message of mutual admiration and set out 11 areas of co-operation that might surprise many readers.

“The communication and exchanges of information and views with respect to, but not limited to, relevant laws and regulations, relevant policies, relevant industry plans and development (including statistical information), relevant project information, relevant company information and any issues of concern as expressed by either of the two parties,” was just one of the agreed areas.

The memorandum also supported and encouraged “Chinese companies to participate in the construction of railroad, port and other infrastructure related to resources development in WA”.

Across six pages, the document agreed to forming a “Western Australia-China Investment Facilitation Working Group” that would be abbreviated to “the Group” and be steered by the WA Department of State Development and the Chinese Department of Foreign Capital and Overseas Investment.

McGowan would say this level of co-operation puts Yang’s memberships of and arrangements with WA-based Chinese groups in the shade.

But the public has a right to know about all of the above and it is usually the media holding the spotlight.