Crikey speaks to ex-MP Keith Wolahan and asks: Was the Liberal wipeout all Jane Hume’s fault?

share_windows This article appeared in Crikey on March 11 2026. 

While Angus Taylor and Peter Dutton are reportedly factors behind the Liberals’ attempt to suppress their own election review, the party’s new deputy leader, Senator Jane Hume, also likely wouldn’t have been too keen on it being published. The document doesn’t mince words about the Liberal Party’s capacity to “thoughtlessly offend groups, including the Chinese”, and clearly sees Hume as part of a widespread problem.

 During the 2025 federal election campaign, 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.

The Liberal review mentions that some Liberal members largely attribute the 2025 defeat of former Liberal MP Keith Wolahan — whom it cites as having provided “insightful analysis” to the review — in the seat of Menzies due to a loss of support with a growing Chinese diaspora.

Wolahan won the seat of Menzies in 2022, despite a 6.34% two-party-preferred swing against the Liberals. He then lost to Labor in 2025 with a further 0.66% swing against him. Importantly, Menzies has the highest proportion of people with Chinese heritage in Australia.

Aiming to recover the Chinese vote in 13 diaspora-heavy seats across the nation, Wolahan deployed a three-year campaign and raised donations to improve the party’s reach and communication within the Chinese community. His team provided daily updates on Chinese-language media and social media, as well as targeted national campaigns. The review says:

It was Mr. Wolahan’s assessment that the party was making inroads, but it collapsed in the final days when the dominant coverage was Senator Hume’s unfortunate ‘Chinese spies’ comment, which went viral in local Chinese-language platforms.

During the election, some Chinese voters in Menzies commented that they liked Wolahan, but couldn’t bring themselves to trust Peter Dutton. Ironically, though, it seems it was Hume as much as Dutton who ended up cruelling Wolahan’s chances.

In his contribution to the review process, Wolahan seems to have apportioned considerable blame for the loss of his seat — as well as those of others — to Hume’s comments, who, until the Liberal leadership spill, had been demoted to the backbench.

But he seems to have softened his critical language now. Talking to Crikey a few days ago, Wolahan was keen to stress that he blames no-one but himself and that he hoped the community would accept her apology.

All parliamentarians should think of themselves as a leader. You should own the good and the bad. So the fact that the seat was lost, I don’t blame anyone other than myself. That was me.

Jane Hume, to her credit, has said it was a mistake. She wished she didn’t do it and she’s apologised for it … And I take that apology in good faith. And I hope the community does, because I know that it was a hurtful comment, because it wasn’t well thought through. And even I know many Chinese volunteers, Chinese-Australian volunteers in the party, that they felt hurt by it at the time.

Wolahan said he understood why Chinese-Australians were hurt, putting himself in their shoes as a person of Irish descent.

If I had heard that a major political party was referring to Irish immigrants as being IRA terrorists, I would be offended by that. And … Italian migrants would be offended if they were referred to as being in the mafia all the time … And so the offence in stereotypes like that is it undermines anyone’s status as an Australian, and we must never do that.

As to his party and its future, Wolahan had a warning: 'We will never be back in government until we understand [this] and the diaspora respects us.'

In the review, Amelia Hamer, Wolahan’s counterpart in Kooyong — another seat with a high Chinese population that suffered a swing against the Liberals — had this advice for her Liberal colleagues: 'Modern migrants no longer come to Australia because they are forever leaving behind their old country and will never go back. They see themselves as part of both places and we need to understand that.'

Turning to Labor, Wolahan criticised the party for seeking to capitalise on the mistakes or insensitive language from his party colleagues for its own political gains, but did give the government credit on some grounds:

I think they’re more disciplined and focused. I think a lot of the areas where we trip up are that some of the senators and members need to get out into the community more. So I will give the Labor Party credit for this. I try to go to many multicultural events, but when I go, I do note that the Labor Party turn up more than the Liberal Party do.

It is easy to imagine Wolahan feeling frustrated after coming so close to holding on to his seat. But that disappointment may also reflect several broader factors. First, he believes that Labor exaggerated the Liberals’ language, 'overblowing' their words, phrases and tone to make their opponents appear more anti-China and hostile to the Chinese communities than they actually are, even though there has been a bipartisan foreign and defence policy on China.

'When it comes to defence and foreign policy, there’s almost uniform commonality between what Labor and the Coalition does,' he said.

Second, he may have reason to feel frustrated that the Liberals have lost Chinese voters’ support, despite the widely held belief that the Liberal Party and the Chinese communities share similar values — they both seek to reward effort, success and entrepreneurship, and both believe in free enterprise.

'I don’t want to generalise, but, you know, the Chinese community, very hardworking, very entrepreneurial,' Wolahan said. 'And they’re sort of core equities that matter to the Liberal Party. And I think there’s huge commonality with the Chinese community here in Melbourne.'

Third, he may think it was indeed unfortunate that his Liberal colleagues’ loose lips derailed the campaign by turning it into an attention-grabbing and controversial political spectacle, even though, in his view, Chinese voters — like all other Australians — were deciding how to vote based on practical everyday concerns.

When asked whether he thinks there are specific political concerns for Chinese-Australian voters, he said, 'I think their political concerns are mainstream. I think their concerns are what any family or individual would be thinking about. Primarily, they’re divided on state or federal issues, but sticking to federal issues, I think the economy is still number one.'

Wolahan is seriously considering running again and said he would make a final decision next summer.