GOLD COAST, Australia—A candidate running for public office in Australia’s general election on May 18 is backing calls by the Australian Conservatives Party to hold a public inquiry into foreign influence from communist China.
The former Toowoomba city councillor, who served two terms in 2000 and 2004, described the current level of foreign influence from communist China as a “real worry,” saying that Australia cannot afford to ignore the espionage any longer.
“We are very worried as a party about the influence Chinese organisations that seem to be arms of the state are having in our universities,” he told the Epoch Times at the Australian Conservatives’s April 30 campaign launch at the Surfers Paradise Marriott Resort on the Gold Coast. They’re also trying to “influence the political process,” he said.
Shelton is particularly concerned about Confucius Institutes (CIs), which are advertised by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Office of Chinese Language Council International, also known as HanBan, as educational organisations to promote Chinese culture and language. Western intelligence agencies warn that the institutes, which are hosted by 12 universities across Australia, are actually used as part of the Chinese regime’s apparatus to gain influence abroad.
“I am very worried about them [CIs],” he said. “This is why we need a royal commission because these CIs don’t seem to be what they purport to be and we need to know the extent of the Chinese government’s influence on them.”
“I can confirm that we have no further sessions booked with the [Tourism Confucius] Institute and no intention to engage them in future,” Acting Manager City Libraries Alison Kemp said in a written statement.
Shelton believes some leftist ideologies the Chinese regime promotes are a threat to freedom, since communism is a totalitarian style of rule that dominates and controls people.
“Stalin along with [Adolf] Hitler was one of the great butchers of the 20th Century. Why is it that the Chinese regime is not being challenged in pursuing a Stalinist ideology?” he said. “If someone was pursuing Nazi ideology that would be condemned everywhere. I think anyone pursuing Stalinist ideology should be condemned in the same way.”
The communist regime takes control of people by attacking their fundamental values about family, beliefs, and free speech, Shelton said.
Shelton added that with the culture of political correctness in the West, human rights commissions and anti-discrimination tribunals now function “very much like totalitarian regimes under communism” in which they “try and force and compel people to think and speak a certain way or else they cop sanction from the state.”
Shelton said he recognises that China has made many achievements in the past several decades, and believes that there is still much work to be done.
“At the moment, there is too much red tape and green tape, which stops businesses from being able to flourish ... to get ahead and to employ more people, and to generate more wealth and prosperity.”
Shelton said that Australia has missed out on the economic boom enjoyed by America because the left-leaning Labor opposition blocked former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull from legislating tax breaks for big business.
“Turnbull’s proposed tax cuts to the big end of town would have created more jobs. I think there should be tax cuts right across the board. I am not against tax cuts for the so-called ‘big end of town,’” he said. “The big end of town employs millions of Australians. People rely on corporations to be prosperous, so they can have jobs for themselves and their families ... we certainly supported the taxes for those larger corporations. The more you can get the government out of people’s lives, the better our society will be, and the more money that is in their pockets.”
Shelton believes that Australia’s politicians need to make a stand against the political system in mainland China, which is increasing its military might and using “debt diplomacy” to make countries signed up to its One Belt One Road infrastructure project “subservient.”
“It is militarising the South China Sea, it is pushing its weight around, it is trying to make countries subservient to it through debt diplomacy in the South Pacific. This is a real, real worry,” he said.
“We need to stand up to China and not allow it to simply bully its way around our region and bully its way with the expat community here in Australia.
