Highlights
- People with Chinese ancestry make up 1.2 million of Australia’s population, according to the 2016 census, and many of them use messaging platform WeChat as a main channel to share and read news information.
- Liberal MP Gladys Liu is hoping to hold onto the federal seat of Chisholm, which has over 40,000 people with Chinese ancestry.
- In January she announced she would boycott WeChat due to political interference concerns.
- Labor candidate in Chisholm Carina Garland is hoping her activity on WeChat will help take crucial votes away from her Chinese Australian competitor.
Alan Qu doesn’t know much about the Labor Party’s policies, but this federal election, he is pinning his hopes on them.
The real estate agent in Box Hill, located in the ultra-marginal seat of Chisholm, was a Liberal supporter in the previous election but is swinging his vote due to the prime minister’s “unfriendly attitude towards China.”
Mr Qu told SBS Chinese that the deterioration of Sino-Australian relations along with the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a significant decrease in Chinese immigrants and investors coming to Australia, which has dealt a blow to his business.
Labor is counting on swing voters in ultra-marginal seats such as Alan Qu this election. Source: Yue Gong
It’s voters like Mr Qu who the electorate’s Labor candidate Carina Garland is hoping to reign in, partly through her marketing on popular Chinese social media platform WeChat.
It’s the latest example of Ms Garland’s efforts to butter up Chinese voters – a demographic that makes up almost 20 per cent of Chisholm’s population (the Australian average is 3.9 per cent), including 14.2 per cent from mainland China.
The way the group votes plays a critical role in determining the outcome of the upcoming federal election with the seat held by Liberal MP Gladys Liu by a slender margin of just 0.57 per cent or just over 500 votes after she defeated Labor’s Jennifer Yang in 2019.
Labor candidate for the seat of Chisholm Carina Garland. Source: AAP
This election, Ms Yang and the Labor Party are throwing their support behind Ms Garland, an academic who grew up in Melbourne’s south-east and a candidate hoping to use her migrant background to attract Chinese votes.
“It’s a community I’m comfortable with. I’ve grown up surrounded by people of different nationalities and cultures and I think it’s what makes Australia so great,” Ms Garland told SBS Chinese.
Ms Garland keeps her WeChat account active through a team of Chinese volunteers working on her campaign.
Every vote counts in the marginal seat, and voters such as Mr Qu know it.
“Chinese people are not given too much decision-making power in this country so we will attach great importance to our vote and our only way of participating in politics,” he said.
Labor candidate Carina Garland is campaigning using WeChat. Source: Supplied
No more WeChat
One difference this election is Ms Liu choosing to abstain from using WeChat to engage with voters.
She cites political interference concerns after the Prime Minister’s account was blocked and rebranded in January.
This means that the Hong Kong-born candidate goes into this election without an important channel to directly engage with Chinese Australians who rely heavily on WeChat for information, says disinformation expert from Monash University Lennon Chang.
“WeChat is the most popular media platform among migrants from China. You can understand why Australian politicians need to have a public appearance on WeChat,” said the Taiwan-born academic.
But Ms Liu recently told SBS Chinese that she had no plans to relaunch her WeChat account earlier this month after the platform in January.
Liberal MP Gladys Liu is relying on traditional forms of meeting and greeting this election, rather than connecting to Chinese voters directly through WeChat. Source: Yue Gong
“If there are people who want to contact me or reach out to me for help, they all know how to find me,” Ms Liu said.
“If friends want to contact me on WeChat, I will see it, but I will not use WeChat as a publicity and advertising platform.”
Supermarket manager and Liberal voter in the seat of Chisholm, Steven Xu, told SBS Chinese Ms Liu’s boycotting of WeChat may undermine her campaign “to some extent”.
“It may cause resentment among Chinese people who rely on WeChat,” said Mr Xu, who fondly remembers shaking Ms Liu’s hand on election day in 2019 and describes her as someone who is “very concerned about her local community”.
But the Glen Waverley resident says the MP can easily get around her own boycott of WeChat through secondary promotions.
Ms Liu has been busy accepting interviews during the campaign, including Chinese media outlets that host content on their accounts.
“Just because she doesn't take the initiative to use WeChat doesn't mean we will never see her news on WeChat,” said Mr Xu.
Chisholm voter Steven Xu still sees Gladys Liu appear on his WeChat feed through posts other than the politician's own. Source: Supplied
Avid federal politics watcher, Will Wang, from Melbourne’s south-east, said Chinese Australians often didn’t watch local television programs because they didn’t appeal to them.
WeChat was therefore the most effective platform for candidates to engage with people like him, he said.
Mr Wang, who migrated to Australia in 2003 and will be voting in his fifth federal election in May, said he believed that Ms Liu’s decision to boycott WeChat wouldn’t help her campaign.
“I see her decision to abandon WeChat as a political move that signals her distancing herself from Chinese Australians,” Mr Wang said.
Mr Wang said he was glad to see Ms Liu, the first immigrant of Chinese background, elected to parliament in 2019, but he didn’t believe she had delivered on her campaign pledges.
“She hasn’t been the bridge for improving cultural awareness and understanding,” he said.
Politics watcher Will Wang says Gladys Liu's decision to boycott WeChat will hurt her election campaign. Source: Supplied
“Over the last three years, prejudices against Asian Australians, particularly Chinese, have worsened, probably because of COVID and the deteriorating relationship with China.”
Better in-person or over the phone
Ms Liu plays down the role WeChat has in attracting Chinese votes, saying that she prefers to connect and respond to constituents on the phone, via email or in-person.
“I don’t think you can use WeChat to gain the trust of voters,” she said.
Professor Zhang said he understood why people were troubled when they saw Australian politicians use WeChat, owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent and affectively under Chinese Communist Party control.
“They’re concerned about internet safety and the extent to which the Chinese government influences the platform,” he said.
But Professor Zhang said he didn’t believe these reasons meant Australia politicians such as Ms Liu needed to boycott the Chinese social media platform.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison's account on Chinese-owned social media platform WeChat was taken over and renamed in January. Source: Pool Getty Images Europe
“If politicians want to reach out to Taiwanese Australian voters, then they would use Line. Every migrant group has its favourite social media platform,” he added.
A battleground for votes
Ms Garland said she was aware of her competitor’s language advantage.
In Ms Liu’s maiden speech to parliament, she used English, Cantonese and Mandarin and her father’s native dialect Teochew.
“We’ve got wonderful [Chinese] community organisers that are volunteering on the campaign. We are very lucky to have so many volunteers from the Chinese Australian community working for my campaign to help communicate with people who may prefer to speak in a language that’s not English about politics,” Ms Garland said.
The current representative has particular fluency in languages whereas I don’t. I’m very fortunate to have so many volunteers to support me.
Alongside the seat of Bass in Tasmania and Boothby in South Australia, the seat of Chisholm is a must-win seat for both major parties in the upcoming election.
“This is a marginal seat. I’m not motivated by anything other than the opportunity to make a difference. That’s it. Really simple,” Ms Garland said.
Ms Liu on the other hand, said she was hoping voters would back her based on past performance and experience.
“It’s like having children and not knowing how to raise your first-born. This would be my second-born. I have already been through the training and I know what I’m doing,” said Ms Liu, who was selected as Chisholm’s Liberal candidate in 2019 following Julia Banks’ defection to the crossbench.
WeChat has become a campaign tool for Australian politicians to connect with Chinese-speaking communities. Source: AAP
“For me, to be voted back in would be an advantage for society for the people in my electorate.
“You don’t want too many changes. If you swap candidates, they then have to go through all the training from scratch.
Working the WeChat room
In the federal seat of Bennelong, Simon Kennedy is running as the candidate for the Liberal Party and Jerome Laxale for the Labor Party.
Both candidates are using WeChat to connect with their Chinese-speaking communities that make up 21 per cent of the area’s total population.
Liberal voter and North Ryde resident, Aven Lin, said there were plenty of people in her circle who relied on WeChat for information more than herself.
“I use WhatsApp, WeChat and Line. Sometimes I’ll Google search to find out about Australian news,” Ms Lin said.
In the NSW seat of Reid, Labor candidate Sally Sitou is also using WeChat to appeal to another electorate with a high population of Chinese voters (18.2 per cent).
Liberal voter in the seat of Bennelong Aven Lin relies on various sources for news, not just WeChat. Source: Supplied
The academic and mother with Chinese roots said she didn’t shy away from using WeChat to reach out to voters.
Ms Sitou said Australia’s Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, Kristina Keneally, told Labor colleagues, after a briefing from national security officials, that there was no evidence that the prime minister’s WeChat account was hijacked.
“If we’re informed by government agencies that we shouldn’t use it, we won’t. But that hasn’t happened,” Ms Sitou said she was told.
The candidate said she also relied on Chinese-speaking volunteers to help her run her WeChat account.
“We need to be talking to them on the platforms [communities] are using,” she said.
Ms Sitou will run against Liberal MP Fiona Martin, who suffered a 1.5 per cent swing against her in the last election and now holds onto the seat with a narrow 3.2 per cent margin.
