So now we know Kevin Rudd’s dealings with AustChina haven’t been limited to trips to China and sundry other points on the globe. This morning he told journalists he had met with AustChina founder Ian Tang for, he says, a cup of coffee and quick chat in Brisbane in “November or December” last year.
Yesterday it was revealed that two other members of the AustChina Five, Tony Burke and Wayne Swan, had also met with Tang in February.
Rudd has declined to release any documentation relating to his travel with AustChina or his dealings with the company.
The AustChina story is now getting into the sort of nitty-gritty that only politics addicts truly enjoy. But small details keep emerging that raise questions about AustChina. Yesterday Crikey stated that Q-Mac, a Perth communications equipment company, had sold high-frequency radios to the Sudanese Army in 2003. Q-Mac is listed on the Beijing AustChina website as a “strategic partner” of AustChina, which paid for Kevin Rudd’s trip to Darfur in 2006.
It turns out that “strategic partner” is slightly misleading. Misleading in the sense of being completely wrong. Q-Mac has advised that it had never heard of AustChina until Tuesday this week, and sells its Chinese orders through an entirely different company. AustChina now says Q-Mac is merely one of several firms it is “in discussion” with regarding business opportunities in China.
The firms Radio Frequency Systems, Longreach, Integrated Research and Future Fibre Technologies, as well as the CSIRO, might like to know they are also considered “strategic partners” of AustChina.
So now we know Kevin Rudd was not in Darfur at the expense of a company with indirect links with the Sudanese military. But Rudd and his colleagues might pause and consider their links with a company with such a flexible approach to the truth. Ever since Labor’s links with AustChina became known, we have been wondering just who exactly this company is. Misleading information on its website doesn’t do much to clear up the mystery.
And perhaps the Prime Minister can tell us if he’ll be catching up with Mr Tang and his associates when he visits Beijing in April.
It is very odd for a Chinese company to donate so much money, in cash and kind, to the two political parties. Please explain, Mr Tang.
I wrote to the Democrats to see if they have been ‘Tanged’!! No response as yet? I see senator Faulkner wants to legislate to fix up our ailing democracy but if he was at all serious he would instigate a TANG senate enquiry to get to the bottom of Rudds odd pre election gifts and find out what has been promised. Given the widespread target of the ‘TANG FACTOR’ this needs to be audited and investigated by a force external to our parliamentary democracy which has been deliberately manipulated by a major trading partner who have everything to gain from total resource access to Australia but if this is the new game plan, i would rather see our government contracted out to Singapore which you report owns more of our assets than the government anyway. If we are going to sell out lets get rid of the Rudd/TANG slime factor and get everyone to put their cards and gambling chips on the table.
Ditto the last comment…there is enough here to suggest Rudd should step down as PM until a full enquiry is launched into what are unconstitutional breaches…what has Bob Brown got to say…better coverage at http://rosettamoon.copley.org.au/?p=122
There’s more than a whiff of Chinese Government action here.
As are the Libs you are becoming rather dramatic about this non event. Whats your interest here? Why not ask the same questions of the Opposition. They received donations of $120.000 from the same company. Why should the PM tell yu who he will meet?