Sunday, September 8, 2019

"The fishy smell around Zhu Minshen's Top Education Institute": Clive Hamilton's "Silent Invasion" raises questions for NSW AG Mark Speakman & the LPAB

by Ganesh Sahathevan


Troy Grant MP

NSW Libs received donations of $44,275 from TOP Education Grosup 
 all details in the LPAB Annual Reports

In "Silent Invasion"   Professor Clive Hamilton  describes how  Zhu Minshen and his Top Education Institute(and other Chinese entities) interfere  in Australian politics.The section on Zhu and Top begins :
"Few people noticed, but the  fishy smell around Zhu Minshen's Top Education Institute was noticeable a few years before it began wafting from the front pages of the newspaper (such as the AFR in 2013)".

In 2012  the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board , a statutory body chaired by the Chief Justice NSW and under the purview of the Attorney General NSW ,began the process that led to Zhu and his Top Group being granted the "first and only"  license to issue law degrees granted a private  company that is not a university.

The notoriety that Zhu and Top Group had gained since 2013,and especially in 2016 seems to have been ignored in the process of evaluating Zhu's application, despite the very high standards of probity the LPAB ,the Chief Justice and the AG profess for anyone seeking admission to practice in NSW.

In  comparison Hamilton reports that in 2013 the then Labor Minister for Higher  Education, Kim Carr, rejected Zhu and Top's application for access to a streamlined visa program on the grounds that Top's students were coming to Australia to work, not study.

Additionally Zhu has been granted the privileges of being part of the NSW and Australian legal establishment despite Zhu's part in organizing what Hamilton describes as "menacing and at times violent mass demonstrations by foreign students" in 2008.
This elevation is in clear breach of the LPAB, the Chief Justice and the AG's own standards of behavior expected of anyone seeking admission to the legal profession in NSW and Australia; under those standards even persistent complaints via email are regarded threatening and intimidating. The AG himself has deemed that merely questioning his person about entities under his purview is behavior that is threatening and intimidatory. 


That Speakmnan was not AG when Zhu and Top were first granted their LPAB approvals is irrelevant for the approvals are reviewed at regular intervals; a recent review ( which was kept confidential) seems to have had an impact on Top's share price.

Hamilton has simply compiled what is in the public domain.The AG and his officers on the other hand remain determined to remain silent on even their failure to disclose fully the  LPAB's dealings with  Zhu and Top Group in the LPAB's annual reports which the AG tables in parliament.
END 

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