LIVE: Election campaign 2025 – Tense moment Nat Barr hits Clare O’Neil with brutal question over fears China is meddling in Australian politics

By BRETT LACKEY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Published: 00:35 BST, 30 April 2025 | Updated: 01:54 BST, 30 April 2025

The major parties are making their final pitches to Australians ahead of the federal election to be held on Saturday.

Labor has moved ahead in the polls and is tipped to win, but there has been an upset in the past when the Coalition pulled off a surprise win in 2019 after they were written off.

With just three days left of campaigning, controversy surrounds Chinese volunteers working for teal and Labor candidates.  

Follow Daily Mail Australia’s live campaign coverage.

Labor front bencher dragged into Chinese volunteer controversy

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has swiftly scrapped a plan to have 10 Chinese campaign volunteers staff her polling booths on election day.

Labor Party member Chap Chow, a Chinese-Australian who reportedly calls himself a ‘friend’ of Ms O’Neil, had organised the volunteers through the Hubei Association, which has been accused of pushing the Chinese Communist Party’s interests overseas.

The group made headlines earlier this week after Chinese-Australian campaigners for teal MP Monique Ryan appeared on a video saying Hubei Association president Ji Jianmin ‘required us Chinese diaspora to support her’.

Ms O’Neil appeared on her usual breakfast TV segment this morning where she was grilled about the plan by Sunrise host Nat Barr.

‘My staff and my office did not make requests for assistance from this organisation,’ Ms O’Neil said.

‘My team politely declined their offer of support.’

But Barr fired back asking if she was worried they were trying to ‘infiltrate’ her campaign.

‘Doesn’t it look a bit dodgy?’ she asked.

Echo of The Voice not music to voters ears

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has given her first-ever podcast interview in which she said Australia will one day have an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, despite the proposal being rejected by the majority of Australians.

About 60 per cent of the country voted against enshrining the representative body in the constitution at the 2023 referendum.

It is considered one of Labor’s resounding failures after Anthony Albanese made establishing The Voice a key point of his 2022 victory speech.

Senator Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast that Australians would change their opinion and would accept The Voice like they did with gay marriage.

‘I think we’ll look back on it in 10 years’ time and it’ll be a bit like marriage equality,’ she said.

‘I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done, and I thought, all this fuss.

‘It’ll become something, it’ll be like, people go “did we even have an argument about that?”

‘Like, kids today, or even adults today, barely kind of clock that it used to be an issue. Remember how big an issue that was in the culture wars?’

When Mr Albanese was asked in Sunday night’s leaders debate whether The Voice would one day be resurrected, he was guarded.

‘I respect the outcome (of the referendum), we live in a democracy,’ he said.

Pushed on his position, he added that: ‘We need to find different paths to affect reconciliation.’

One Nation founder’s blast from the past

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LIVE: Election campaign 2025 – Tense moment Nat Barr hits Clare O’Neil with brutal question over fears China is meddling in Australian politics

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