Sometimes you just want to laugh when you hear about people like this, considering he is just some former reality TV star, and no one major. However, Mark Wales (who is also a former SAS soldier) has just won the Liberal pre-selection for Tangney ( which was convincingly won by Labor’s Sam Lim at the 2022 Federal Election), and Wales has written a novel where a fictitious Chinese invasion takes place.
According to an interview conducted by ABC News, Wales whose novel Outrider is scheduled to be released later this year, stated that he doesn’t believe his book would be controversial.
“I spent a lot of a time with the editor going through the book in advance and we had this concern in mind, so I’m totally confident with it.”
“It’s a minor plot point, it’s in the background — the bigger story’s about a father and a son,”
“I’m totally confident that it’s a minor part of the story and it’ll be totally fine once it’s released.”
To be honest, as a privileged white man, he would never understand racism and things which cause racism. Anything that even mentions a Chinese invasion. Even a small mention or if it only is 3% of the story line, it is still extremely problematic. There is already racially charged negative narratives about Mainland China in Australia, and mentioning a Chinese invasion will only exacerbate the issue. Someone like Wales, will never understand this due to the white and gender privilege he has.
In addition, why would the Liberal Party pre-select him to run against Labor’s Sam Lim for the next federal election? Considering the electorate of Tangney has a significant population of Chinese Australian voters, this may bite Wales in the ass during the campaign. Similar sentiment were conveyed by Ting Chen – the WA chapter of the Chung Was Association,
“The preselection of Mr Mark Wales shows the ignorance and the arrogance of the decision-makers of the Liberal Party,”
“Ignorant of how the voters of Tangney think about a candidate who fantasised a war with our largest trading partner.
“Our community wants peace, more trade, not war.”
Well, let’s just wait and see…