Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
When the Labor Party’s Jerome Laxale won the Sydney seat of Bennelong from the Liberals at the 2022 election, votes from Chinese Australians angry about then-prime minister Scott Morrison’s spat with Beijing were instrumental in his victory.
Now Laxale and other politicians are using social media including Xiaohongshu, a Chinese lifestyle app also called RedNote, and other campaign strategies to appeal to Chinese communities who will again be a crucial bloc in the upcoming election.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, battling a plunge in popularity and polls showing a neck-and-neck race, will be counting on holding seats like Bennelong at the May 3 election.
But opposition leader Peter Dutton is also pushing to secure the support of Chinese Australians, many of whom abandoned the Liberal-led conservative coalition government in 2022 over Morrison’s strident criticism of China during the COVID pandemic.
The rupture in bilateral ties – with Beijing imposing trade sanctions on A$20 billion ($13 billion) worth of Australian goods – has been largely repaired by Labor, with trade now flowing unrestricted.
But with cost of living pressures biting and the economy growing at a crawl, that may not be enough to save Albanese.
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