By Paul Monk, in The Australian
Last December, the federal government put four bills before parliament framed to head off foreign interference in this country’s institutions. The primary concern was, and remains, China — more precisely, the intelligence organs of the Chinese Communist Party. This past week, a striking illustration of why such measures have become necessary played out at Victoria University in Melbourne.
Members of the Chinese community and the local media company Journey West Media arranged a screening of Canadian director Doris Liu’s acclaimed documentary about the functioning of Confucius Institutes around the world. A lecture theatre at Victoria University was booked and paid for and dozens of people registered for the event. Then the university pulled the plug on the screening.
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