A Bilingual Encounter on NSW Elections Day

At the polling station of affluent Beecroft for last Saturday's NSW State Elections I watched with some unease a Caucasian woman demanding from an 80-year-old Chinese lady what the Chinese characters were saying on the How To Vote cards the latter was handing out.

As the old lady spoke very little English, I ventured forward to help. After perusing the bilingual material, I reassured the voter that the Chinese scripts were exact translations of the parts in English - how to vote for the Unity Party in the Upper House and in the Lower House. The voter stomped off, not entirely convinced, probably a little suspicious that we were in some kind of collusion.

I am not a supporter of the Unity Party. It claims to be a party promoting multiculturalism but it had often if not invariably given their preferences to the John Howard's party regardless of his past records on multicultural and race issues. In one instance they had even reneged on a preference swap agreement with the Labor Party towards the Elections Day and after the How to Vote cards have been printed, receiving the preferences from Labor but giving theirs to the Liberals! Sadly many new Asian Australians are either ignorant of the rather complex electoral voting system or oblivious of the Unity Party's preferential deals.

Which brings us to the question of why the Unity Party would use this frail 80-year-old who spoke hardly a word of English to hand out election day materials in affluent Beecroft? What do they hope to gain in contesting a lower house seat such as Epping, apart from grabbing some unintended votes from the Asian community for the Liberal Party ?

I believe the Unity Party a party of Asian business people out to establish contacts and do convenient deals with some ultimate private business 0bjectives.