Penny Wong’s family’s association with a United front organization

A post for public record

Penny Wong has been a senator from South Australia since 2002, and served as minister for Climate Change under the Rudd Government from 2007 to 2010. She served as Minister for Finance and Deregulation from 2010 to 2013, under then prime minister Julia Gillard. After the federal election last month, she was sworn in as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, just before her trip to an AUKUS meeting with prime minister Anthony Albanese.

According to political and defence commentator Professor Joseph Siracusa from Curtin University, the United States should expect a much more measured response to US initiatives and actions under the new government. Prime minister Albanese’s first address to AUKUS in Tokyo, focused primarily on climate change, playing down the defence aspects of the alliance.

Penny Wong was born in Sabah, Malaysia, where her younger brother James is the head of the Sabah chapter of the Malaysia-China Chamber of Commerce – Youth Entrepreneurs Committee. The mission of the young entrepreneurs committee is related to assisting young entrepreneurs and networking.

James himself, is a successful architect within Sabah.

However, indicating the Sabah chapter’s close relationship to China, was the fundraising dinner held at a major hotel in Kota Kinabalu for Wuhan, China, back in February 2020. The guest of honour was the Chinese Consul General to Sabah as the Facebook video below indicates.

 https://www.facebook.com/fcas.sabah/videos/269809140652968

The Malaysia-China Chamber of Commerce gains some of its funding through the United Front. The Malaysian political party Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) formally developed very close links with the United Front during Najib Razak’s tenure as prime minister.

The United Front is a direct offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It controls and funds key organizations to disseminate propaganda, gain influence, and nurture other organizations to pursue the above objective. As has been documented and reported upon, the United Front is very active across the ASEAN region, and in Australia.

Such a relationship between siblings and connection to a foreign influencing organization such as the United Front, appears to fall outside the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018, which imposes obligations on individuals and other entities that undertake representative activities on behalf of foreign principals.

This post does not infer any wrong doing. In fact, the existence of a back channel to Australia’s largest trading partner, China could be of great advantage during a time of crisis.

What is important is the above becomes public knowledge in order to bring the issue into the public domain, as the FITS allows such relationships to slip through the gatekeeper.

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