Liu, who made history as Federal Parliament's first Chinese-born MP, said the positions had been honorary and she no longer had ties with the groups. She also claimed some Chinese organisations appointed people as members without their knowledge.

Liu also scrambled to clarify that she did not think China was a democracy after initially failing to answer Bolt’s question on whether she thought Xi Jinping was a dictator.

And after being unable to articulate the Australian government's South China Sea policy when Bolt asserted China had "stolen" territory, Liu is now singing from the required hymn sheet, which states Australia has not taken sides and believes disputes should be resolved peacefully in accordance with international law.

Liu's troubles make a neat bookend to the corruption scandal unfolding in NSW where the Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations that a series of straw donors were put in place to disguise prominent Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo as the source of a $100,000 donation to the NSW Labor Party.

NSW electoral laws ban property developers such as Huang from donating, but his eagerness to get close to political figures from both major parties raised suspicions among security agencies and he has been effectively blackballed from returning to Australia. Huang has denied he is the source of the donation to the NSW Labor Party.

Huang is a former chairman of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, another group tied to the United Front Work Department.

These recent developments in State and Federal politics have demonstrated once again how strongly those on either side of the long running debate over foreign influence in Australia feel about their position.

Professor Clive Hamilton, who profiled the United Front as part of his book on Chinese influence, Silent Invasion, said pro-Beijing groups began to emerge in Australia in the 1990s and early 2000s alongside a new wave of patriotic Chinese immigrants.

But those efforts were turbocharged in 2012 when Xi became President and pumped more resources into the department.

Hamilton contends that while community groups often present as "home-town" or professional associations, "when you look beneath the surface, you start to see Beijing's fingerprints".


"Whenever people of Chinese ethnicity gather, the Chinese Communist Party wants to know about it and have an influence," he tells AFR Weekend.

"It would be hard to find any organisations that haven't been penetrated. The Chinese Communist Party is paranoid."

Hamilton says the United Front seeks to enforce China's will in a variety of ways. At one end of the spectrum, "incentives" are used to ensure groups toe the line, such as spreading rumours to shame a person, cutting off a business from China's economy or even threatening personal safety. Other organisations are simply United Front outposts. There is no suggestion that the organisations that Liu was once associtated to is one of those groups.

Other China experts, however, believe the influence of community groups is exaggerated.

Alistair Nicholas, chief executive of policy institute China Matters, says that while virtually all groups that want to engage with China have a connection to the Communist Party or some element of the government in Beijing, "most of them are quite innocuous".

"They don't really do much," he says. "They have many people who are members, but all of them aren't agents provocateurs.

"There may be individuals who think what they're doing will impress someone back in Beijing, but they may not be doing Beijing's bidding."

James Laurenceson, acting director of the University of Technology Sydney's Australia-China Relations Institute (which was established in 2014, in part thanks to a $1.8 million gift from Huang) says the evidence Liu is treasonous is "threadbare".

He points to comments Liu made in July where she said she backed the "passion and commitment" of the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong (where she as born, leaving the mid-1980s to study in Australia) as evidence she is no mouthpiece for Beijing.

"What is she doing that is contrary to Australian interests?" he asks.


While senior ministers from Morrison down have lined up to back Liu, some Liberal MPs are nervous.

For one thing, if she were ousted from politics and the Liberals failed to hold Chisholm, that would leave the government effectively tied on 75 votes with Labor and all the crossbenchers on the floor of Parliament, although the Coalition would be able to rely on Speaker Tony Smith's casting vote.

Publicly, though, the Government and the Liberal Party have closed ranks around Liu. Victorian powerbroker Michael Kroger has said he had no knowledge of ASIO warning against preselecting her, and denied the party had to return $300,000 over security concerns about donors she had invited to a 2015 fundraiser.

The Prime Minister argued Liu's only sin was a "clumsy" interview, and he paired his defence with offence, effectively accusing Labor of racism.

"This has a very grubby undertone in terms of the smear that is being placed on Gladys Liu," Morrison said.

"They might want to dress it up as national security but I think 1.2 million Australians of Chinese heritage get the point."

Labor's Senate leader Penny Wong, who is of Malaysian heritage, hit back by accusing Morrison of injecting race into the debate.

Perhaps it comes down a simple matter of personal ambition. Colleagues say Liu, who tried several times to enter Parliament, was a prolific fundraiser and key conduit to the Chinese community.

Being able to bring in money and votes is an age-old skill valued by politicians in any language.