Blue Mountains Labor MP Trish Doyle has apologised that an event held at Wentworth Falls last year has "caused offence" in the community over comments Labor leader Michael Daley made about Asian immigration.
Blue Mountains Liberal Party candidate Owen Laffin today [Tuesday, March 19] called on Ms Doyle to "unconditionally repudiate" comments made by the Labor leader
The emergence of a video of Mr Daley's comments at a Politics in the Pub event at Wentworth Falls in September 2018 made headlines today. In the video, the then deputy Labor leader said there was "transformation" under way in Sydney and young workers were being replaced by Asian immigrants.
"I don't want to sound xenophobic, it's not a xenophobic thing, it's an economic question," he added.
A spokesman for Mr Daley said he made the comments in the context of a discussion on "cost of living and housing affordability pressures on young people".
But the comments raised serious concerns, according to the Liberal candidate for Blue Mountains.
"Trish Doyle is seen in the video as the MC of the event at Wentworth Falls and she allows Michael Daley to continue making racist comments about Asian Australians without contradiction," said Mr Laffin.
"Michael Daley is a two-faced hypocrite and a similar allegation can be levelled at Trish Doyle after her lack of action on the night and her continued silence.
"On behalf of the Blue Mountains community, I call on Trish Doyle to unconditionally repudiate Michael Daley's abhorrent comments."
In response, Ms Doyle said she was "sorry that an event in my electorate has caused offence to any person or group in our community, whether here in the Mountains or beyond".
"The video excerpt of the conversation at the Politics in the Pub shown in the media does not reflect what I know to be Michael Daley's deeply held values of socially progressive egalitarianism and collectivism.
"Mr Daley has apologised for his remarks, which he acknowledges were a clumsy and offensive way of characterising his concerns about the intersection of a number of different issues, including overdevelopment, property market speculation and housing affordability, employment and the lack of infrastructure to support population growth in suburban Sydney."
But Ms Doyle also turned the attack on the Liberal Party.
"Mr Laffin is a candidate for the Liberals, a political party which routinely whips up xenophobia and Islamophobia around the plight of vulnerable refugees, a party which continues to indulge its far-Right faction in their homophobia and which attacks the rights of low-paid workers, who are very often from migrant communities, and which undermines the role of women in public life," she said.
"I won't be lectured to by him or his political party on any of these issues."
