Senator Hume’s ‘apology’ for her ‘Chinese spies’ remarks rings hollow for many

share_windows This article appeared in Crikey on February 16 2026. 

During the 2025 federal election campaign, Liberal Senator Jane Hume appeared on Seven Network’s Sunrise and claimed that some volunteers campaigning for Labor “might be Chinese spies”. 

The remark landed heavily among Chinese-Australian communities. For them, it was not simply a careless turn of phrase — it was an allegation that cast suspicion on their civic participation and political loyalty. Many, including former Liberal MP Gladys Liu, called for a “heartfelt” apology.

 Yet politics has its own rough justice. The controversy was widely seen as damaging her party’s electoral prospects, and it was speculated as being part of the reason Sussan Ley demoted Hume to the backbench not long after. For some Chinese Australians, that demotion felt like a form of accountability — imperfect, but tangible. The episode could now at least recede into memory.

But following the recent Liberal leadership spill, Senator Hume’s time in the political wilderness has proven short, having reemerged not quietly but as deputy leader to Angus Taylor. This elevation of Hume to the party’s second-highest position reopens an unresolved chapter in the Liberals’ attempt to win back Chinese-Australian voters, who are struggling to move past her comments.

Within WeChat groups of Chinese Australians across several cities, news of Hume’s political revival has been met with a mix of disbelief, cynicism, unease and, in some cases, anger. Her promotion reactivates an old anxiety: that politicians can openly voice their suspicions about the loyalties of Chinese Australians and ultimately blithely weather the backlash — and even be rewarded. 

One Perth-based man who has lived in Australia for almost four decades shared his view in his WeChat group:

The fact the Liberal Party has elected her to be deputy leader of the party is sending a message to people with Chinese heritage in Australia, that the party couldn’t care less about what Chinese Australians think.

On Friday, Hume was asked by a journalist about her “Chinese spies” comments and how she would restore trust with Chinese-Australian communities. The newly minted deputy leader said “the comments that I made two days before the election were out of line,” adding that she had already “in fact, apologised to those that were offended”.

But nearly a year on from her comments, many Chinese Australians have been under the impression that Hume has not offered an apology. Hume’s remarks on Friday prompted some frantic googling by Chinese-Australian WeChat users, and the search proved futile until someone came across a Sky News article published in September in which Hume told the outlet she should “never have used the phrase ‘Chinese spies’ during the election campaign” and “for that, I apologise”.

But talking to Sky News, Hume was also quoted as saying:

Now, I shouldn’t have used that phrase. I should have used Chinese Communist Party or I should’ve used PLA. But unfortunately that phrase was clipped up by Labor a couple of days before the election and sent out on WeChat as a distraction, as a deflection … Somehow my comment, rather than that clip, seemed to be the story of the day. I think that’s just outrageous because let’s be honest about this, if politicians can’t raise the spectre of foreign interference in our electoral system without being accused of being racist by either politicians or commentators, well, then we’re really in trouble.

So yes, Hume did utter the words “I apologise”, except they came with a “but”. Apologising with one hand while taking it away with the other, she shifts responsibility away from herself, reframing the issue as one of tactical miswording and political manipulation. Indeed, Hume does not appear to have reflected on the distrust and prejudice underlying her apparently offhand comment, or on the consequences of associating a particular community with espionage.

Further, by foregrounding her claim that Labor weaponised her words, Hume effectively turned an apology into a grievance, neatly avoiding engaging with the deeper concern that conflating community members with foreign agents risks reinforcing public suspicion and stigma towards Chinese Australians.

When an apology is infused with a sense of injustice, it sounds less like remorse and more like reluctant compliance. At no time did Hume acknowledge the fear and hurt felt by many Chinese Australians, nor did she recognise her failure to separate civic participation from foreign interference. By recasting the episode as a defence of the right to raise “the spectre of foreign interference”, Hume elevated her remarks into a matter of free political speech. 

Jimmy Li, president of the Victorian chapter of the Chinese Community Council of Australia — the organisation that issued an open letter last year demanding an apology from Hume — said to Crikey, “We continue to hope the newly elected Deputy Liberal leader Senator Jane Hume will offer an open and genuine apology to the Chinese-Australian community for her past ‘Chinese spies’ remarks, which unfairly stigmatised our community and diminished our equal right to participate in Australia’s democratic process.” 

The senator might find that platforms such as Sydney Today have more Chinese-Australian readers than the English-language Sky News website, should she ever decide to offer such an unqualified apology.