So I’m just going to put a few quotes from articles next to each other …
“Labour MPs on the justice select committee have voted against allowing China politics expert Anne-Marie Brady to make a submission on foreign interference in elections.
[…]
“Justice committee chairman Labour MP Raymond Huo said the decision to decline Brady’s late request was purely procedural.”
– source, the NZ Herald, 07/03/19
[I’d further note that, as made clear in the Herald article, the Select Committee was written to by Justice Minister Andrew Little to request a broadening of its scope in this inquiry to cover foreign electoral interference … *after* the September cutoff date for submissions that Huo’s citing – thus bringing it only directly into Brady’s area of expertise after she would have been able to apply to submit, as an ordinary citizen, although still not vitiating the select committee’s ability to hear from her anyway, at their discretion – but read on …]
“Recall that on TVNZ a few weeks ago, veteran diplomat (and now lobbyist) Charles Finny, who has been keen to stick up for both men and celebrate their membership in our Parliament, explicitly stated that he was always very careful what he said in front of either man, as he knew – and given his diplomatic/trade background he would know – that they were both close to the Chinese Embassy. If Finny always takes care what he – just a private citizen lobbyist now – says in front of Yang or Huo, how should ministers or senior opposition MPs react?”
– source, a writeup by economist Michael Reddell, 28/11/17“Raymond Huo霍建强 works very publicly with China’s united front organizations in New Zealand and promotes their policies in English and Chinese. Huo was a Member of Parliament from 2008 to 2014, then returned to Parliament again in 2017 when a list position became vacant. In 2009, at a meeting organized by the Peaceful Reunification of China Association of New Zealand to celebrate Tibetan Serf Liberation Day, Huo said that as a “person from China” (中国人) he would promote China’s Tibet policies to the New Zealand Parliament.
It was Huo who made the decision to translate Labour’s 2017 election campaign slogan “Let’s do it” into a quote from Xi Jinping (撸起袖子加油干, which literally means “roll up your sleeves and work hard”). Huo told journalists at the Labour campaign launch that the Chinese translation “auspiciously equates to a New Year’s message from President Xi Jinping encouraging China to ‘roll its sleeves up’.” …… Xi’s catchphrase has been widely satirized in Chinese social media. Nonetheless, the phrase is now the politically correct slogan for promoting OBOR, both in China and abroad. ……. In 2014, when asked about the issue of Chinese political influence in New Zealand, Huo told RNZ National, “Generally the Chinese community is excited about the prospect of China having more influence in New Zealand” and added, “many Chinese community members told him a powerful China meant a backer, either psychologically or in the real sense.””
– source, ‘Magic Weapons’ – aka the Brady Report , September 2017.
Or, phrased more bluntly: I suspect there is a rather obvious reason that Huo moved to have Brady’s testimony blocked.
Placing Huo in charge of what has turned into the effort to track, monitor, and where possible, to *counter* PRC malfeasance within our polity – is not entirely unakin to asking a mosquito to go off and find the cure for malaria.
Also, lest this be misinterpreted as some kind of hit on Labour … I have absolutely no doubt that were National still in the driving seat, they’d have MPs acting *exactly* the same way.
After all, the National-led previous Government consistently moved to block investigation or scrutiny of Dr. Jian Yang, despite numerous ‘red flags’ being actively waved by our security services.
There are good people inside Labour, and our Parliament more generally. I see no reason why Andrew Little,when broadening the scope of the inquiry to specifically include potential foreign interference in our election, would have done so with an intent to have Professor Brady, our foremost expert in exactly this field, excluded. Indeed, quite the active contrary.
The fact that events have played out in the manner that they have – suggests that Fate is in ample possession of a flair for the dramatic, and a keen sense of irony.
This is the price we now pay, for having treated Mainland China as just any other country where we allowed immigrants in from.
Some persons were warning of consequences, when earlier governments started letting in so many Mainland Chinese to become permanent residents. They were not really refugees, were they, they also came with the permission of their government, most of them at least.
So Mainland China has been able to establish migrant communities in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, even the US and many other countries. And although some may even take up the citizenship of their new ‘chosen’ country, they will always remember where they came from, and be mindful of Mainland China’s non democratic government. They do well know, that one day that superpower will have a lot to say and will be able to get a lot of influence all over the globe, so standing against it, that carries risk for every person doing so.
And corporations like Huawei are only that what they are now, with the permission of the Chinese government, so those in charge in them, they will also be mindful, who they have to give thanks to.
For any country to become dependent on certain Chinese products, it will be the next step to becoming a new form of a neo colonial serf state.
Yes and your very own Party Leader foresaw all this decades ago.
I’m definitely voting NZ First come next election.
When foreign powers try influencing this country using either force of arms or sneaking in through the back door and neither major political party lifts a finger , – or worse, – actively welcomes them and includes them as MP’s ,… then its time to take this country back.
Tell your leader he has no right whatsoever to retire as now more than ever we need him at the helm. When truth tellers like Nicky Hager and Anne-Marie Brady have their homes broken into or their computers hacked and their data stolen , – with tardy responses from the Police , then enough’s enough .
Tell him from me. And a ton of others who have had a gutsful of the neo liberal scum.
Its time to cull the snakes as snakes are not native to New Zealand.
It is called a Trojan Horse Virus, they enter through the back door.
is not entirely unakin to asking a mosquito to go off and find the cure for malaria.
stupid fucken analogy. cure for malaria does not involve killing mosquitos or even denying their source of nourishment
Idiot.
Just like the mosquitoes source of nourishment being blood , – so is the chinese communist party.
And arseholes like you DEFEND THIS :
How China’s trillion-dollar trade initiative helped forge a humanitarian …
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12211113
So off you go then , – you snidely suggested to me to protest down the main streets of Auckland about the chinese communist party’s plants in our society and YET ….
Are strangely silent when I in return challenged YOU to wave a placard and protest down the main streets of Beijing about :
1 / Organ harvesting and murder of the Falun Gong ,
2 / Mass internment of political prisoners , – many of whom were protesting for democracy,
3 / The treatment and belligerence shown to the people of Tibet ,
4 / AND china’s soft power expansionism into the South Pacific among other regions as a way to undermine the USA.
So go on , – off you go, – I’ll give you one day tops before you are arrested and thrown into prison then whisked off to an interment camp then interrogated.
Chump.
Go live there if you think its so fine. Don’t leech of the benefits of New Zealand like a coward sucking on the tit of democracy.
Then you had the gall to try and deny china doesn’t spy on the west or NZ. And in the process tried to point the finger at this country because we are part of the 5 Eye Spy network .
You’re pathetic.
Mark: “stupid fucken analogy”
I agree. It isn’t at all apt: mosquitoes don’t cause malaria. The Anopheles mosquito is a vector only, unwittingly carrying the parasite which causes malaria. Treatment of the disease doesn’t nowadays involve exterminating the mosquito, but rather the administration of drugs to infected people.
Is the author suggesting that Raymond Huo is merely a vector, unknowingly transmitting the malignity of the PRC? No? Thought not…
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