This is quite a courageous claim,. I for one, being a migrant, cannot recall anyone, let alone an "ethnic leader" ask my opinion. I can say the same for other migrants I know and know of.
Some of these "leaders" are in fact in Parliament. Labor MP Sam Lim is one example. It is his party that is pushing the Voice referendum. Labor MPs are unanimous in their support for the Voice referendum and related legislation.
Lim however, does not look like he wants to live with the consequences, or cares what they might be.
“I always tell my wife and politician friends that when I retire, I will come back and make Malaysia my home again,” he said.
Lim's words suggest he remains a Malaysian citizen for Malaysia is unlikely to reinstate his Malaysian citizenship, if in fact it has been revoked, and permanent residence is extremely difficult to obtain.
In any case,MPs who intend living elsewhere after they have left office cannot be trusted to do what is in the best interest of Australia's long term interest.
TO BE READ WITH
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Malaysian born Labor MP Sam Lim remained a Malaysian citizen for over 13 years after becoming an Australian citizen, in defiance of Malaysia's laws.
by Ganesh Sahathevan
Newly elected Malaysian born Labor MP Sam Lim's Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) candidate declaration. includes his Australian citizenship certificate, which is dated 13 December 2008. He states in his declaration that he ceased being a Malaysian citizen on 10 September 2021. Malaysia does not permit dual citizenship, and he was therefore in breach of Malaysia's laws for over 13 years.
The proof of renunciation he provides is a letter from Malaysia's National Registry Department, addressed not to him but to a consular officer at the Malaysian consulate in Perth, which states that Lim's declaration of renunciation has been "registered" on 10 September 2021, and that he was no longer a Malaysian citizen as of that date.
There are two issues that arise from that letter.First, it is addressed to a consular officer, and not Lim. Why it has been provided Lim is unclear. Second, while it states that Lim's brith certificate is to be returned to him, it does not say if it now bears the appropriate stamp to signify that he is no longer a Malaysian citizen.
As stated before, Lim has provided proof that he has applied to renounce his Malaysian citizenship. Better evidence is required that he has in fact ceased to be a Malaysian citizen, That evidence should include an explanation as to why Lim has not provided the AEC any correspondence from the relevant Malaysian authority addressed to him. The same issue has been raised by this writer with regards documents produced by Senator Penny Wong.
Meanwhile, it should be of concern to Australians that a sitting MP was in breach of a foreign country's laws, in this case for over 13 years.
Malaysian born Labor MP Sam Lim has applied to renounce Malaysian citizenship, no evidence provided that the application has been accepted, and that Lim is no longer a Malaysian citizen
The process of renouncing Malaysian citizenship involves making an application to renounce citizenship, which the Malaysian Government may or may not accept. Acceptance of the application is notified by letter, and a stamp on the Malaysian Government issued birth certificate which declares that the person is no longer a Malaysian citizen. Lim has not provided any of that.
The registration that he refers to in his AEC declaration is the registration of the application to renounce citizenship, nothing more.
” In one of the earliest historical documents signed between the rulers of the territories that would become North Borneo, the title of “Maharaja of Sabak” was conferred on Baron Gustave von Overbeck in 1877 by Sultan Abdul Mumin of Brunei. The term “Sabak” was found in the Jawi version of the appointment, whereas “Sabah” was used in the English translation of the appointment of Baron von Overbeck as Rajah of Gaya and Sandakan and Maharajah of Sabah on 29 November 1877. Baron von Overbeck was a former Austrian Consul in Shanghai who took over the original concession of the territory that constitutes most of present-day Sabah, and who attracted British interest through the trading house of the Dent Brothers (Alfred and Edward Dent) of London.
Meanwhile the Sultan Of Brunei maintains strong ties with the United Kingdom. One of the world's richest men, he owes much of his wealth to the oil and gas exploration and production activities of the UK 's Royal Dutch Shell.
Additionally, while Brunei ceased to be a British protectorate in 1984, the British Army maintains a presence in Brunei. The 2nd Royal Gurkha Regiment is proud of the Sultan's patronage.
Mr Arnold's enthusiastic promotion of his boss' re-imagining of British-Sabah history seems to suggest that he would rather the Sultan Of Brunei heed Ms Wong's advice and re-fashion his ties with the UK in some form that confronts their shared colonial past. One cannot imagine the Sultan not taking offence.
Abidin who was representing Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor presenting a memento to Faridah in the form of a framed picture of Stephens’ last function in Labuan, two hours before the crash happened. Inset: Penny Wong.
Australia’s new Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who is Sabah-born, may be the right person to finally get the Australian findings into the Double Six tragedy declassified.
This was expressed by Faridah Stephens, daughter of the late Tun Mohd Fuad Stephens, who perished in the tragedy on June 6, 1976, with four of his key ministers.
The story is important given the personalities involved, who remain influential in Sabah,and in Malaysia (see photo above). The matter has not however received any Australian coverage, despite the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporting the crash and the investigation that followed in 1976 (see story below) and despite the ABC's extensive reporting of Penny Wong's "balik kampung".
IT is up to the relevant authorities whether they want to disclose the final investigation report of the 1976 Double Six Tragedy, says Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor.
“On June 6, 1976 (44 years ago), a tragedy dubbed as the ‘Double Six Tragedy’ became part of Sabah’s history when a Sabah Air-owned GAF N-22B aeroplane crashed,” he said in a written reply to a question by Nominated Assemblyman Datuk Yong Teck Lee.
The crash, he said, claimed 11 lives, including then Chief Minister Tun Fuad Stephens.
“It is believed that the Australian government had sent four investigation teams to help find the cause of incident.
“However, the actual cause is yet to be known until now and the report had been classified.
Therefore, it is up to the related authorities whether they want to reveal the report,” he said.
Yong had asked whether the State Government will make a request to the Federal Government to re-open the Malaysian final investigation report on the tragedy.
A probe involving the Australian GAF Nomad manufacturer and officials from the Australian Department of Transport was launched and completed some four months later, but the full report was classified under the Official Secrets Act.
Apart from Tun Fuad, the crash also took the lives of Datuk Peter Mojuntin who was then Sabah Local Government and Housing Minister, Datuk Salleh Sulong (Sabah Finance Minister), Chong Thien Vun (Sabah Works and Communication Minister), Datuk Darius Binion (Assistant Minister to Deputy Chief Minister), Datuk Wahid Peter Andu (Private Secretary to the Sabah Fin-ance Minister), Dr Syed Hussin Wafa (Director of State Economic Planning Unit), Datuk Ishak Atan (Private Secretary to Malaysian Federal Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah), Johari Stephens (Tun Fuad’s eldest son), Captain Ghandi Nathan (the pilot) and Corporal Said Mohammad (bodyguard to Tun Fuad).
On June 22, 1976, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation announced the findings from the GAF investigations, which determined that the cause of the accident was due to pilot error.
However, additional details were not released and the Australian investigation report remained classified since then.
In 2017, then Sabah Chief Minister Tan Sri Musa Aman, during question time at the State Legislative Assembly sitting, said the reports are still classified because the “Sabah Civil Aviation Department has no new information on the crash”.
Evoking her own family’s experience of British colonialism, the Malaysian-born Wong said countries such as Britain would not find common ground in the region if they stayed “sheltered in narrower versions” of their histories
“My father is descended from Hakka and Cantonese Chinese,” she said. “Many from these clans laboured for the British North Borneo company in tin mines and plantations for tobacco and timber. Many worked as domestic servants for British colonists, as did my own grandmother.”
That however is not the whole story. Equally important is how Chinese migrants and businessmen from China cooperated with the British in these ventures. As the writer of a letter reproduced in Sabah's Daily Express notes:
For attracting Chinese capitalists, planters, traders and coolies the territory is most favourably situated, being within four and-a-half days’ steam from Hong Kong whence, by the arrangements successfully inaugurated by Sir Walter Medhurst, the Company’s special representative at Hong Kong, coolies can be engaged without the intervention of the class of Chinese brokers, such as those in Penang and Singapore who have acquired fortunes from this lucrative business at the expense, partly of the planters of Province Wellesley, Johore, the Native Protected States and Deli (Sumatra), and partly at that of the coolies themselves.
Already influential Chinese agricultural companies have been formed and have taken up land on the East Coast of the territory and set to work.
For instance the China Sabah Land-farming Company, with a capital of 300,000 taels, has taken up 40,000 acres, on the banks of some of the rivers running into Sandakan Bay.
THE question is often asked, “I am well assured that for North Borneo and its inhabitants the advent of the company is the best thing possible, as the advent of the dynasty of Sir James Brooke has proved to be in another part of the island; but how does the company expect to raise a revenue out of the country in excess of the expenditure which will he required to carry on the government in such a manner as the sentiments and feelings of the nineteenth century demand?”
In the limits of a leading article it is hardly possible to discuss each available source of revenue, but it may be interesting to examine a few of the more salient and interesting sources whence the requisite taxation for carrying on the government may be expected to be obtained, so far as our brief experience and knowledge of what has been done enables us to forecast.
Take first the land, the most permanent source of wealth in all countries. The Company’s territory is roughly estimated to contain at least 20,000 square miles of land, or 12,800,000 acres.
Owing to the sparseness of the indigenous population and their want of energy, and of any desire to lay up wealth or provide more than is sufficient for their wants from day to day, a very large proportion of this acreage, especially on the East Coast, where the population is scantiest, is available for sale by the Company to European and Chinese planters and companies.
From this sale of land the government of the Company derives not only a direct profit — the price realised per acre - but indirect revenue derived from the population introduced by the planters directly and indirectly — coolies, and the storekeepers and traders who supply their wants.
The bulk of the coolies employed on the estate will, it is now certain, be Chinese, and the experience of Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements and of the Malay Peninsula teaches us that every Chinaman in the population is worth to the Treasury from $10 to $12 per annum, derived from their contributions to the excise farms of opium, tobacco, spirits, and in other ways we need not particularise here.
For attracting Chinese capitalists, planters, traders and coolies the territory is most favourably situated, being within four and-a-half days’ steam from Hong Kong whence, by the arrangements successfully inaugurated by Sir Walter Medhurst, the Company’s special representative at Hong Kong, coolies can be engaged without the intervention of the class of Chinese brokers, such as those in Penang and Singapore who have acquired fortunes from this lucrative business at the expense, partly of the planters of Province Wellesley, Johore, the Native Protected States and Deli (Sumatra), and partly at that of the coolies themselves.
Already influential Chinese agricultural companies have been formed and have taken up land on the East Coast of the territory and set to work.
For instance the China Sabah Land-farming Company, with a capital of 300,000 taels, has taken up 40,000 acres, on the banks of some of the rivers running into Sandakan Bay.
The geographical position of North Borneo with regards to Australia is also most favourable, Elopura (Sandakan) being within five day’s steam of Port Darwin, and this fact has already attracted the attention of capitalists in the colonies, Mr de Lissa having been the first to appreciate the advantages to be derived and having acquired 10,000 acres of land on the Sapagaya river, in Sandakan Bay, which is pronounced by many experienced in cultivation to be specially adapted for the culture of sugar.
A North Borneo land syndicate has since been formed in Australia, and has applied for 100,000 acres of agricultural land in North Borneo.
The founding of Singapore was a peripheral result of the India-China opium trade.1 That trade, portrayed in the works of David Edward Owen and Holden Furber, has been updated by Jonathan Spence, among others.2 Its details and history are integral to the history of the Singapore Chinese. For a full century, Singapore was "Opium Central: Southeast Asia." Opium was so common in nineteenth-century Singapore that most writers seem to take it for granted.
The (British Colonial) government earned most of its revenue by franchising the opium trade to wealthy Chinese businessmen. Well-known names in the opium trade include Lau Joon Tek and Cheang Sam Teo, who made up the Lau-Cheang Syndicate, Heng Bun Soon, Tan Seng Poh and Cheang Hong Guan. Cheong Hong Lim and Tan Seng Poh were other well-known names who partnered with Tan Hiok Nee (Tan Yeok Nee) in spirit and opium farming. Opium, or chandu (Malay for cooked opium), was commonly inhaled or smoked. The ash or residue after opium was smoked for the first time was also recovered by shopkeepers and sold at a cheaper rate.
Peranakans initially worked for the large British trading companies as intermediaries, since they could speak Chinese dialects, Malay, and also English. They later set up their own companies to supply Chinese workers, grow gambier and other commodities, and run shipping companies. Several wealthy Peranakans purchased the government monopolies of opium, which proved to be extremely profitable.
Penny Wong's account of the Hakka in Sabah contradicted by another Wong from Sabah: The immigration of the first Hakka pioneers to Sabah was arranged by the British North Borneo Chartered Company in 1882. In order to increase its settler population, the North Borneo Company encouraged Chinese to enter the state by introducing a new immigration scheme in 1921, known as the ‘Free Passage’ or ‘Free Pass’......The new immigration scheme was popular among the Hakkas in the south of China and they took this opportunity to bring their families with them to Sabah.... This suggested that the Hakka immigrants planned to settle down in Sabah, unlike other Chinese immigrants who came as labourers, artisans or businessmen (Historical Sabah : the Chinese / Danny Wong Tze Ken)
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has put his foot down on his daughter Nurul Izzah’s appointment as his adviser for economics in both the Prime Minister’s Department as well as the Finance Ministry, saying it is to ensure that contracts and tenders are managed in an “orderly” manner.
The announcement ensures that daughter Nurul Izzah will oversee the award of lucrative government contracts and the even more lucrative variation orders to contracts already awarded, and that are to be awarded.
Nurul Izzah Anwar has told Malaysia's The Star that her father, Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has appointer he to the highly influential role of Adviser, Economics and Finance. Nuurl's revelation to Wong Chun Wai appears to be the first public announcement of the appointment.
The position of Economics and Finance Adviser is highly influential for the holder of the office can sway the award of government contracts and concessions.
In her new position Nurul is likely to also have control over Petronas' cashlows.
Defending the appointment of his daughter Nurul Izzah as the country's Economics and Financial Adviser , Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim has said:
As finance minister, Anwar was responsible for financing Malaysia's foreign reserves almost entirely out of statutory deposits -- placed at no interest by financial institutions -- at the Central Bank.
Anwar was also responsible for Malaysia's dependence on short-term foreign investment to finance the country's perennial current account deficit. This was a policy particularly evident in 1996 when, in order to shore up the country's reserves, interest rates were raised to attract funds into the country.
(Anwar's calculated dismissal.(Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia) From: Business Asia | Date: 12/14/1998 | Author: Sahathevan, Ganesh)
The Asian Currency Crisis followed in 1997, and Malaysia had to impose currency controls.The so-called reserves were simply insufficient to deal with the exodus of foreign exchange. The country has not actually recovered from that debacle.
Now it seems, finding himself again Finance Minister and Prime Minister as well, Anwar demands that his daughter be granted the same privilege to do as he did for eight years (in the 1990s)”.
Nurul Izzah Anwar has told Malaysia's The Star that her father, Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has appointer he to the highly influential role of Adviser, Economics and Finance. Nuurl's revelation to Wong Chun Wai appears to be the first public announcement of the appointment.
The position of Economics and Finance Adviser is highly influential for the holder of the office can sway the award of government contracts and concessions.
In her new position Nurul is likely to also have control over Petronas' cashlows.
Nurul Izzah Anwar has told Malaysia's The Star that her father, Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has appointer he to the highly influential role of Adviser, Economics and Finance. Nuurl's revelation to Wong Chun Wai appears to be the first public announcement of the appointment.
The position of Economics and Finance Adviser is highly influential for the holder of the office can sway the award of government contracts and concessions.
In her new position Nurul is likely to also have control over Petronas' cashlows.
