Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am indebted to the Chinese writer Ma Jian, whose novel Beijing Coma was recently published, for his commentary in today's Australian on the trial and conviction of Gu Kailai, the wife of the Chinese Communist Party boss Bo Xilai. Many in the Chinese leadership fear Bo Xilai will become the new Chairman Mao of China by a coup or a putsch. Gu Kailai would have become the new Madam Mao. In Ma Jian's column this morning, he explains the background to her murder trial. She has been convicted of the murder of her former partner, British businessman Neil Heywood. He quotes her book where Gu Kailai says:

Chinese lawyers would not quibble over the meaning of each little word—

compared to her experience in the United States, where she also practised briefly as a lawyer—

Once they are sure that you murdered someone, you will be arrested, judged and executed by firing squad!

Of course in her privileged case, despite the fact that she has been convicted of murder and despite the fact that that is the standard practice in China, where more than 3,000 people face capital punishment each year, she will not face execution. She is a typical paradigm of the Maoist mentality and communist notions of legality. She failed the entrance exam at the Beijing university; nonetheless, she was granted an exception and admitted to study law soon after the Communist Party restored law departments at various universities. Before that, she sold pork in the market, according to Ma Jian, where she earned the nickname 'Yi dao zhun', which means she could hack off a slice of meat with one blow. That does not seem to be a high qualification for getting into a law course at Beijing university, but perhaps it does explain the mentality which led to the death of Mr Heywood.

There is a monolithic system of justice that is unjust in China, where great people like the artist Ai Weiwei are persecuted and people who are an adornment to China and to Chinese culture like the writer Liu Xiabo, the first Chinese to win the Nobel Peace Prize, are in jail. These are the people who, in my view, represent the great civilisation of China, not the hacks and the former pork marketeers who become lawyers and then apparent wives of chairman of the Communist Party wannabes.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! In accordance with standing order 193 the time for constituency statements has concluded.