Chisholm candidate says 2016 article where she said Chinese-Australians viewed LGBT issues as ‘ridiculous rubbish’ does not reflect her views

Liberal candidate Gladys Liu has responded to criticism about comments she made in a 2016 interview with Guardian Australia in which she said Chinese-Australians viewed LGBT issues as “ridiculous rubbish”, saying they do not reflect her own views.

“I reject any suggestion the comments reported in 2016 were my own views,” Liu said in a statement.

“At the time I was responding to a question about comments I had received from some members of the Chinese community.

“I firmly support equality across our community.”

The Chisholm candidate was provided with a copy of the audio yesterday, before it was publicly released but did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia on Monday about her claims the report was “fake”. Instead, Liu provided a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying the comments were not her personal views.

She also cancelled a planned interview on Sky News on Tuesday. According to political editor David Speers, the interview was cancelled “after Sky refused request to go softly and not ask any awkward questions”.

David Speers (@David_Speers) Interview cancelled after Sky refused request to go softly and not ask any awkward questions. Great strategy guys. https://t.co/y8BxqTx38B

Liu conducted a WeChat campaign against Victoria’s Safe Schools policy ahead of the 2016 election, when she was the head of the Liberal Party’s Victorian community engagement committee.

She told Guardian Australia at the time that the campaign helped the Liberals win Chisholm for Julia Banks. Banks has since quit the party and is running as an independent in Flinders, leaving the spot open for Liu.

However Banks said on Tuesday that Liu had no involvement in her own WeChat campaign in 2016 and was more involved in the campaign for the neighbouring seat of Deakin, held by conservative Liberal MP Michael Sukkar.

“She worked intensively on Michael Sukkar’s campaign and her values are more aligned to the right wing conservative faction of the party,” Banks told Guardian Australia.

“My WeChat campaign was managed by the same people as my social media posts and I had no idea she was making these comments on WeChat. Certainly not endorsed by me; I find [Liu’s comments] completely abhorrent and ridiculous. Completely misaligned to my values.”

Chisholm voted 61.6% in favour of marriage equality in the 2017 postal survey, while Deakin voted 65.7% in favour.

Sukkar disputed Banks’s claim, saying Liu did “an outstanding job on the Chisholm campaign at the last election.”

“She coordinated many volunteers in the Eastern Suburbs,” he said. “But as a Liberal Party member in the Chisholm electorate, her primary focus and formal role was in that electorate.

Sukkar said his campaign did not have a WeChat account in 2016.

Senior Liberal Josh Frydenberg, whose electorate of Kooyong borders Chisholm in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, said the comments made by Liu “don’t reflect my views or Scott Morrison or the party’s views”.

Liberal candidate's claim of ‘fake' report prompts release of audio interview Read more

Speaking to ABC News Breakfast on Tuesday, Frydenberg was asked what action the party would take over the comments.

Host Michael Rowland pointed out that Labor candidate Melissa Parke had recently dropped out of the race in Curtin after making comments that leader Bill Shorten had said did not reflect the views of the Labor party. Parke made a number of comments about Israel, including that the way Israel treated Palestine was “worse than the South African system of apartheid”.

But Frydenberg said he would not disendorse Liu, saying she was “a strong local candidate”.

“The point is we, as a party, stand for tolerance, we, as a party and as a government have presided over the same-sex marriage debate which ended successfully,” he said.

How a Chinese-language social media campaign hurt Labor's election chances Read more

It was in an interview for the 2016 Guardian Australia article that Liu said a lot of Chinese-Australians opposed the Safe Schools policy and same-sex marriage, saying “Chinese believe same-sex is against normal practice”.

“Chinese people come to Australia because they want ... good things for their next generation, not to be destroyed – they used the word destroyed – by these sort of concepts, of same-sex, transgender and inter-gender, cross gender, and all of this rubbish,” she said. “To them they are just ridiculous rubbish.”

Liu made similar comments to the Age in 2016, saying that Safe Schools undermined conservative Chinese values and “we are concerned it will change society and the moral standard [of] the culture”.

Guardian Australia released the audio after Liu told the Australian she had been misrepresented by the article.

Liu’s campaign is still active on WeChat and largely shares messages of support from volunteers and members of the Chinese community in Chisholm.

In one post, the mother of an international student who was the victim of a violent home invasion in Ormond in 2016 thanked Liu for supporting the students and rallying media interest in the story, which was picked up as part of coverage around the Apex gang.

The post indicated Liu would continue to campaign on the “African gangs” issue. Both African gangs and abolishing Safe Schools were key policies for the Victorian Liberal party in the November state election, which resulted in a Coalition wipeout.

