My Yellow Peril

Ben Lee
20 min readJan 3, 2018

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‘The Mongolian Octopus — His Grip on Australia’ by Phillip May, The Bulletin, 21 August 1886.

“Yellow Peril” — a century-old term still familiar to Asian diaspora communities in the West. The first illustration for this article is a cartoon entitled, “The Mongolian Octopus — His Grip on Australia,” published in the Sydney Bulletin in 1886. The giant head at the centre of the image is a classic caricature of a person of East Asian heritage, what people once called “Mongoloid”. His grotesque features — squinting eyes, buck teeth, hair pulled back severely in a queue — are supported by tentacles of vice, coiling around the people and institutions of White Australia. His is the face of the Yellow Peril.

A present-day reader flipping through back issues of the Bulletin would rightly decry that magazine as irredeemably racist. But then, publications like it were common from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century. They supported racist rhetoric from politicians of all stripes, enshrined in the White Australia Policy that was progressively dismantled only after World War II. It may seem easy to look back on that history with derision; multicultural Australia has no time for such bigotry. Immigration, free trade and foreign investment are the foundations of our prosperous and diverse society. Truly, I would like to believe it. As an Australian of Chinese heritage, however, I fear the idea of the Yellow Peril has life in it yet.

Silent Invasion

Even I didn’t understand the frightening extent of communist influence in Australia until I was well into researching and writing [my book]. — Clive Hamilton

On 13 November 2017, Professor Clive Hamilton of Charles Sturt University publicly stated that publisher Allen & Unwin had chosen not to publish his book, Silent Invasion, due to the threat of defamation action against them by agents of the Chinese government. The subject of his book is the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia. Academic discussion of the Australia-China political relationship has been ongoing for years, but Professor Hamilton’s case is the latest in a series of high-profile stories of Chinese interference in Australian affairs.

The biggest story last year was the Four Corners exposé in June of Chinese business entities donating more than A$5.5 million to both major political parties between 2013 and 2015. Australian politicians alleged to have benefited include Labor Senator Sam Dastyari and former Liberal Trade Minister Andrew Robb. Unsurprisingly, Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye brushed off the allegations, and accused those spreading them of trying to stir up “China panic.” Even if he was obfuscating, the ambassador’s comment was not without merit. The cartoon below captures essentially the same discourse from nine years ago.

‘Hu Jintao’ by Ward O’Neill, Australian Financial Review, 4 April 2009.

Instead of some anonymous “Mongolian,” at the centre is former Chinese President Hu Jintao, Forbes’ second-most powerful person in the world in 2009, who would claim the top spot the following year. This octopus has shed its old vices, its discarded tentacles referring to the “Pak ah-pu” and “Fan Tan” gambling games of the Bulletin cartoon. It has instead ensnared former prime ministers John Howard and Kevin Rudd. Its crimes range from “Buying Australian companies” to “Terrifying the Australian newspaper.” This is clearly a parody rather than an homage to the original cartoon. It encourages us to dismiss the idea of a secret Chinese invasion as hysterical as the fear of the Yellow Peril. Substitute Xi Jinping’s face for Hu Jintao’s, change some of the labels, and I imagine the result would be the same. Even Ambassador Cheng might appreciate it.

Other images, however, are deadly serious. On the cover of Professor Hamilton’s book, beneath the words ‘Silent Invasion’ is a photograph of Parliament House. Hanging in place of the Australian coat of arms is a portrait of Chairman Mao, the one that usually hangs over Tiananmen Square. This image is designed to elicit not laughs but gasps. I certainly gave it a double-take, and unpacking my reaction is one of my motivations to write this article. I doubt that Professor Hamilton would argue that Chinese influence will lead to a literal overthrow of the Australian government. But it’s difficult to communicate nuance on bookstore shelves, because that’s not what sells.

We may not see Professor Hamilton’s book for a while, but the story of Allen & Unwin dropping it will help some people make up their minds before they’ve had a chance to read it. Of course, this wasn’t a front page story, being overshadowed by fights over same-sex marriage and citizenship. But policy-makers still pay attention this stuff. Esoteric controversies in the academic and publishing worlds shape elite attitudes to substantial policy problems. And one of the most complex and least understood policy areas, one in which the Chinese have become inextricably involved, is education.

Young Pioneers

Isn’t it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned? Isn’t it also great when friends visit from distant places? If people do not recognise me and it doesn’t bother me, am I not a noble man?— Confucius

In October 2017, Frances Adamson, Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said in a speech that international students in Australia should engage in respectful debate rather than spread propaganda. That Ms Adamson delivered her speech at the University of Adelaide’s Confucius Institute made clear who the targets of her remarks really were.

Confucius Institutes may be understood as the Chinese equivalent of Alliance Française or Goethe-Institut. They are designed to encourage Chinese language learning and cultural appreciation. They are international projections of Chinese soft power, which in itself is no more objectionable than French, German or, indeed, American soft power. But the presence of a Confucius Institute on campus allows the Chinese government direct access to students and an influence over discourse on Chinese politics. For this reason, the University of Chicago and McMaster University in Canada, among others, have terminated their relationships with Confucius Institutes. Yet, hundreds more remain open worldwide, including in Australia. In any case, the closure of these institutes does not address the challenge posed by Chinese students in general. Australian security services suspect Chinese students of associating with Chinese intelligence agents, informing on compatriots who do not toe the Communist Party line, and passing on sensitive information.

It is too easy to blame Chinese students themselves. Young Chinese people are indoctrinated from an early age in the power and virtue of the Communist Party. Whether or not they become communist ideologues, they carry with them an idea of Party ubiquity, reinforced by Chinese embassies, businesses and community groups wherever they travel to study. Knowing the power the Party has over them and their families in China, how could anyone refuse to cooperate? Coming from a country whose tradition prizes education but whose size and economic inequality has put it out of reach for many, Chinese students would understandably choose not to jeopardise the investment their families have made in sending them to a foreign university.

The Australian government could choose to restrict or prohibit Chinese students from Australian universities. This would be both ruthless and catastrophic to the university sector. In 2016, over 21 per cent of students at Australian universities were international. 28 per cent of those were from China, followed by India at 11 per cent. Meanwhile, education as an export raked in over A$22 billion last year, A$15 billion of which came from higher education. Now, a Chinese exit from Australian universities is more than theoretical, as universities in China and nearby Asian countries gain global prestige (see the latest Times Higher Education and QS rankings for Asian universities). If Chinese students stop coming and are not replaced, Australian universities face financial ruin. Domestic students will not gain the knowledge or skills to keep the Australian economy afloat, let alone raise it to a level on which it can compete with the likes of China. This is just one way China has inserted itself into our economy so deeply that its very absence would spell disaster.

‘Inherit the Brush of Polemics and Struggle to the End’(接过战笔,战斗到底)by Xiao Zhenya and Liu Enbin, Shanghai People’s Publishing, 1975. This Cultural Revolution poster depicts a young girl emulating Lu Xun, a seminal figure in early twentieth century Chinese vernacular literature. The quote is from his 1932 poem ‘Self-mockery’: “Coolly I face a thousand pointing fingers, then bow to be an infant’s willing ox.”

Accommodating the views of foreign students is necessary, and doable, as suggested in this column in The Conversation. After all, Chinese propaganda would be right at home alongside the home-grown Marxist agitation that is par for the course at Australian universities. It’s not even primarily aimed at Australian audiences, anyway. But it doesn’t help universities overcome their ivory tower reputations. Throw in accusations of harbouring spies, and you can begin to see why the federal government is desperate to defund them, as economically damaging as that would be. And that would further increase universities’ reliance on international students, perpetuating the problem.

The absence of an easy answer doesn’t stop people from looking for one. The next election won’t be won over university funding or international students, but the status quo is untenable, and a breaking point may be reached that will force policy-makers, and the Australian people, to make a rash decision. Brexit and Trump would be cliché if they did not illustrate so well the destructive power of rash decisions taken on a national level. Such decisions will prevail in an environment that does not foster policy nuance. It appears to me that we live in such an environment, one that divides us into groups and then forces those groups to fight to the death out of self-preservation.

Family Values

Homosexuality is a tragedy of a family, a grave to the family bloodline, a curse of family sonlessness! — Anti-same-sex marriage leaflet distributed in suburban Sydney

A recurring criticism of Chinese students is that they often congregate separately from the main student body and so do not experience the cultural exchange that studying overseas is meant to facilitate. This is not far removed from that old refrain about immigrants in general: they don’t assimilate.

One data point that stood out amongst the results of the Australian same-sex marriage survey was the high ‘no’ vote in Western Sydney. The politicisation of same-sex marriage was never going to end after the survey’s conclusion, but blaming immigrant communities in Western Sydney is a particularly ugly way to continue an already bruising debate. The celebration of a convincing ‘yes’ victory became yet another opportunity to denigrate immigrants as un-Australian recalcitrants.

I cannot do justice to all the issues that need discussing. There are already many articles out there, including this one specifically addressing the issue of the ‘no’ vote in immigrant communities. What I am interested in is how issues like this splinter ethnic communities, and how this diversity of opinion, if acknowledged, gets hijacked for political purposes.

At first glance, the statistics don’t look good for Chinese people. According to the 2016 Census, in the New South Wales electorate of Blaxland, the top ‘no’ voting electorate at 74 per cent, 11.3 per cent of residents claimed Chinese ancestry, higher than the statewide average of 5.2 and the national average of 3.9. Next door in Watson, the next highest ‘no’ voting electorate, the percentage is identical. It should go without saying, however, that concentrating only on these numbers is lazy. For one thing, the percentage of residents claiming Chinese ancestry is 14.7 in Melbourne and 13.9 in Sydney, the two highest ‘yes’ voting electorates. One also has to consider age, religion, income, general political leanings and numerous other factors to begin to make out why certain communities voted one way or the other.

That is not to say that homophobia isn’t a problem in immigrant communities. While the survey was criticised within the wider LGBT+ community as being a costly and painful way of affirming support for same-sex marriage, its divisive effect was felt among the Chinese community (and you can read about it here and here). This division is a cause for concern, and also demonstrates that the Chinese community, like any ethnic or religious community, cannot be treated uniformly. In fact, it is an insult to all of us that anyone could assume we all thought the same.

That’s why it’s difficult to know how to feel about someone like Dr Pansy Lai. Lai was a public face of the ‘no’ campaign, appearing in a TV ad for the Coalition for Marriage. In the ad, concerned mothers claimed that boys would be made to wear dresses and children would have to learn radical gender theory if same-sex marriage were legalised. Dr Lai said, “When same-sex marriage passes as law overseas, this kind of program becomes widespread and compulsory.” This “won’t someone think of the children” argument, linking same-sex marriage to the dangers of sex education and anti-bullying programs, was a common tactic of the ‘no’ campaign, and Dr Lai was an accomplished practitioner.

Pansy Lai stands out not just because of her conservative views, but because she linked those views to her Chinese identity. In June, Dr Lai founded the Australian Chinese for Families Association (ACFA), a group seeking to “bring together the Chinese community throughout Australia who hold traditional family values.” ACFA then sent subscribers an email claiming that people in same-sex marriages were more likely to commit suicide or die of AIDS, and that gay conversion therapy was effective. Not linked to ACFA but in a similar vein, leaflets distributed in suburbs around Australia claimed, in English and Chinese, that same-sex marriage would lead to child abuse, rape, abortion, and a lack of sons. This pandered to a traditional and still widespread Chinese fear: the failure to continue the family line.

To many younger Chinese people, straight or gay, this is incredibly old-fashioned. But Pansy Lai, ACFA and whoever printed those leaflets have chosen to exploit that attitude. This exacerbates cultural prejudices that harm vulnerable members of these communities, like young gay people. It also plays into the hands of those who vocally oppose same-sex marriage, and then turn on immigrants who vote against same-sex marriage. You can probably guess which politicians and media personalities they are. Thus, people like Dr Lai do a disservice to the very community they claim to represent.

Nevertheless, Dr Lai is entitled to express her opinion, and those who sought to punish her personally also do a disservice to public debate. After the Coalition for Marriage’s ads started airing, some people started an online petition to have Dr Lai deregistered as a medical practitioner. Not only did the petition go nowhere, it gave ammunition to anti-LGBT campaigners. I was doubly worried that the backlash would reflect poorly on the Chinese community as a whole. While Dr Lai is not representative of the community, we’re not widely represented at all. So, when one of us gets torn down, however deservingly, that voice is lost. And for however long that person attracts public disgrace, that’s one more negative representation that can be thrown back at us.

One Nation

They will take over power of Australia. They will form their own government. Would you like 20 million people to move to Australia? Would you like to see that happen? — Shan Ju Lin

Pansy Lai kept her day job, but her public profile appears to have gone down with the ‘no’ campaign ship. Shan Ju Lin, on the other hand, was dumped overboard. Ms Lin is a Taiwanese-born school teacher who, among other things, has served on the organising committee of the Harmony Day Festival in Ipswich. She was also nominated by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to run for the seat of Bundamba at the 2017 Queensland election.

Ms Lin was touted as One Nation’s first Asian candidate, and managed to stay remarkably on-brand by defending Pauline Hanson’s twenty-year-old comments about Australia being “swamped by Asians.” For her own part, Ms Lin hoped to win the votes of “good Asians” who, like her, feared the influence of Communist China.

Ms Lin’s brief candidacy came to an end in January 2017 when she posted homophobic statements on Facebook, saying, “gays should be treated as patients,” and, “abnormal sex behaviour leads to abnormal crime.” In a statement disendorsing Ms Lin, Senator Hanson said, “These are not the views shared by One Nation, nor the views of fellow candidates and the general public…I will not stand by and allow people to trash the party or my name, so I make no apologies for being tough on candidates.”

To be clear, Senator Hanson does not hold progressive views on same-sex marriage or LGBT+ rights in general. She claims to have voted against same-sex marriage in the postal survey, and abstained from voting when the amending bill was put to the Senate. She has warned that legalising same-sex marriage will negatively influence sex education in schools, and lead to underage marriage and polygamy. These comments are no different to Ms Lin’s Facebook posts. While I would never want Ms Lin to be elected, it is galling to see a problematic public figure, who happens to be Asian-Australian, being held to account by Senator Hanson, who can blamelessly say the same thing.

Ms Lin went on to run as an independent in the November election, coming second-last with 5.43 per cent of the primary vote. Many of her erstwhile One Nation colleagues did better. Stephen Andrew won the seat of Mirani with a primary vote of 32.03 per cent and a two-candidate-preferred vote of 54.8 per cent. In the electorate of Ipswich, former One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts attracted the second-highest primary vote at 26.61 per cent. Other electorates where One Nation came second in the primary vote include Ipswich West, Lockyer, Scenic Rim, and Southern Downs. This collective performance was not what One Nation had hoped for, but better than many expected.

That there was more than a little appetite for One Nation in Queensland raises many questions about the state of our politics. One question remaining unanswered is whether the increasingly strident supporters of an anti-Asian, anti-gay party would have voted for an Asian candidate. If Senator Hanson had chosen to amplify, rather than stifle, Ms Lin’s comments, she could have ridden 2017’s homophobic and Sinophobic wave much further. But would enough One Nation voters have brought themselves to look past the Oriental face on their how-to-vote cards, to find an intolerant heart to match their own? One may be tempted to call Senator Hanson merciful for saving them from that choice.

The China Choice

Modern China was founded in 1949 with these words: ‘Zhongguo renmin zhanqilai — the Chinese people have stood up.’ It was an assertion of sovereignty, it was an assertion of pride. And so we say: ‘Aodaliya renmin zhanqilai — the Australian people stand up.’ — Malcolm Turnbull

Some argue that there is a looming choice Australia cannot avoid. Professor Hugh White of ANU has written about increasing Chinese assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific in his book The China Choice, and twice on that subject for Quarterly Essay. Professor White argues that China will usurp the United States’ military and economic primacy in the Asia-Pacific, and Australia’s continued dependence on American protection is unsustainable. If Australia does not choose the way it engages with a Chinese-dominated Asia, the choice will be made for us, and it may not be to our liking.

Professor White’s argument appears, to me, to be an Australian extension of a fashionable foreign policy discussion about the “Thucydides trap.” Thucydides wrote The Peloponnesian War, an account of the war in which Sparta won hegemony over Greece from Athens. In this context, analysts claim that China is the modern-day Sparta to the United States’ Athens, and while war is not inevitable, careless diplomacy could bring it about. I make no claim to the wisdom of these analysts, though I have some doubts. For example, is China better insulated from the stagnation that hobbled Japan’s world-conquering economy in the 1990s? Or, in a near-future conflict, could the Chinese depend on President Trump not calling their bluff?

If these questions could easily be answered, analysts like Professor White would be out of a job. And I can see why he would criticise Australia’s current defence posture. On 23 November, the government released its Foreign Policy White Paper. The White Paper explicitly names China as a challenger to the American-sponsored order in the Asia-Pacific, but goes on to explain how Australia’s positive engagement with both countries will help maintain regional stability. It’s a nice sentiment, with an air of unreality to it. It would be extremely trusting to work with a country that unilaterally declares ownership of an entire sea. It would be naive to accept the assurances of a country that has allied itself with a dictatorship that practically salivates for nuclear war. The Australian government is well aware that a deepening partnership with China may lead to exactly these results, but you wouldn’t necessarily glean that from the White Paper.

It is understandable for the government to want to avoid offending China. Professor White’s criticism would sting less if it were based merely on appearances, but our approach to China carries the whiff of chaos. For example, the government’s recent introduction of anti-espionage laws may be considered a natural reaction to foreign interference in our politics, Chinese or otherwise. To do so while simultaneously hounding Sam Dastyari from Parliament for collaborating with Chinese agents was ham-fisted. For Malcolm Turnbull to then stridently quote (or misquote) Chairman Mao almost invites Chinese rebuke, which they obligingly provided.

The problem is not that the Prime Minister legislated against espionage, or called out Chinese interference if he had a good basis on which to do so. It is that the political and moral framework that should support such actions is weak. To attempt to firewall Chinese influence when the economy is so reliant on it, and when politicians happily receive Chinese donations, is untenable. To unleash the hounds of xenophobia upon political opponents while real foreign agents remain untouched is reprehensible.

English translations of pamphlets by Mao Zedong, from the collection of the National Library of Australia. Photo by the author, December 2017.

None of this is to say that dealing with China is easy. It is a dilemma, and a dangerous one for Australia. We may be witnessing the culmination of a long game, longer than the Cold War, longer even than the life of the Soviet Union. In China, the period between 1842 and 1949 is commonly referred to as the “century of humiliation” at the hands of the Western powers and Japan. When modern Australia was itself in infancy, it was easy to kick the “sick man of Asia.” The British Empire brought China to its knees in the Opium Wars. Many Chinese fled their homeland as the ruling dynasty collapsed, only to be treated as cheap labour or parasites. The idea that refugees from a dying regime could threaten even an outpost of the greatest empire on Earth is laughable. Yellow Peril was a racist joke.

That’s not true anymore, and hasn’t been for some time. China has worked hard to make that period a mere interregnum in the global supremacy it has previously enjoyed. It appears to be succeeding. Those that once exploited China are now so entangled with it that they cannot destroy or undermine it without harming themselves. The great powers of the last couple of centuries, and their supplicants like Australia, never respected China enough to prepare for its revival. In lieu of that respect, the Chinese seem happy to give substance to once baseless fears.

As people and nations belatedly notice the tentacles wrapping around them, and struggle to escape their tightening grip, how could they not lash out? There must be some consolation in striking that octopus in his squinty, yellow face. I take cold comfort, for the face of the Yellow Peril is mine.

Foreign-language editions of Xi Jinping’s ‘The Governance of China.’ Photo: Shen Qilai/Bloomberg News.

We are one, but we are many…

The Sydney Morning Herald recently published an article by Daniel Hu, a 2017 graduate of Sydney Boys High School. Daniel wrote about how he owed his Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) of 99.85 to his parents’ sacrifice. His father worked multiple jobs in the cleaning industry by day and tutored him by night, despite arriving in Australia without a word of English. Many children of immigrants would recognise this story, as I recognise Daniel’s professed indebtedness to his parents, which he might never repay.

My parents were nowhere near as disadvantaged as Daniel’s. Both had enough English and financial support to attend university here, allowing them to give me and my siblings a secure, middle-class upbringing. So integrated were we into Australian society that I grew up speaking fluent English at home without even a smattering of Cantonese, my parents’ mother tongue.

Despite my monolingual childhood, I unwittingly picked up on the way language shapes perceptions of identity. At some point I noticed that, if a person’s ethnicity ever came up in conversation, my parents would refer to people sharing our background as “Chinese.” People of Japanese, Lebanese, Greek or Italian background would be referred to as such. People of Anglo-Celtic background were simply “Australian.” My family’s socio-economic profile is indistinguishable from countless other suburban households, and still my parents internalised the idea that our Australian identity is qualified.

I have heard several times the idea that each wave of immigrants experiences discrimination from White Australians as a matter of course, as if multiculturalism comes with an elaborate form of hazing. Progressing from the Irish, through the Italians, Vietnamese, Arabs and Sudanese, every non-Anglo population has copped a beating and earned its own ethnic slur. Having undergone this bullying, immigrant communities supposedly get left alone thereafter.

Should Asian-Australians feel safe now? How long is this mandatory period of discrimination meant to last? Does it simply run out of steam, or does it ebb and flow? The Lambing Flat riot occurred in 1861, and was merely the most notorious among numerous violent incidents against Chinese on the goldfields. 135 years didn’t stop Pauline Hanson being elected to Parliament on the back of anti-Asian sentiment, and a further twenty years didn’t stop her election to the Senate. If people are prepared to listen to a demagogue who spouts rhetoric little removed from the nineteenth century, why wouldn’t they act the same way too?

It’s not like the Chinese government is a small target these days. I am frustrated and saddened by the behaviour of these self-appointed guardians of my cultural heritage. I am dismayed at their willingness to use international students as geopolitical pawns. I am anxious at their brinkmanship in the South China Sea and their acquiescence to North Korea’s nuclear provocations. And if they are buying political influence in Australia, I would condemn such disrespect and hypocrisy.

China’s transformation from a figure of ridicule to one of fear, however, puts people of the Chinese diaspora, like me, in a difficult position. I am proud of my ancestral homeland and want the best for its people. I am also proud of the country in which I’ve grown up and want the best for my fellow citizens. Anyone with an ounce of civic pride would find these desires entirely natural, and I resent any actions or policies that would make them mutually exclusive.

That is why I find the example of Shan Ju Lin so tragic. She picked a team that was never going to let her take the fight to the commies. She built no bridges between Chinese-Australians and the wider community. Her public disgrace shows that xenophobes won’t reward minorities for buying into xenophobia. I expect they would quickly forget who the “good Asians” were if a backlash against the Chinese in Australia were to happen again.

Pansy Lai’s example, on the other hand, shows that a Chinese-Australian community exists not as a monolith, but a diverse collection of individuals. Our diversity reflects the rich tapestry of Australian society that is one of its greatest strengths. It also reflects a weakness: the difficulty we have in pulling together. My foreign background divides me from my fellow Australians, and my shared heritage no longer binds me to fellow Chinese. I conceive of diversity as an acceptance of our society’s broadness, in thought, in ability, in composition. I now find myself at odds with those who would go to war, cultural or otherwise, to keep our identities narrow.

The result of the same-sex marriage postal survey showed our democracy at its finest, but the journey there showed our politics at its most craven and degrading. All this to resolve a simple matter of domestic policy. What if our greatest fears were realised, and Australia were drawn into a direct economic or military confrontation with China? Could I rely on the Australian people to separate the Chinese-Australian community from the Chinese government? Could I rely on the Chinese-Australian community, as such, to weather the storm together?

There are things we can do as a country to make sure it doesn’t come to that. We could increase our Asia-literacy by promoting Asian language learning and cultural exchanges across the region. We could gear up our defence cooperation with neighbouring powers, particularly Indonesia. And at home, we could treat each other as individuals worthy of respect and attention, rather than interest groups to be coveted or derided in turn. But I’m afraid we’re running out of time. The Chinese sun has risen, and our shadows are getting shorter by the hour.

Australia’s fortune is bound up with China’s, as mine is bound up with Australia’s. I will always choose Australia, but I dread the day when I am asked to do so, and my choice is taken as a betrayal of one side or another. Like my family, Daniel Hu’s, and many others, the vast majority of Chinese in Australia are here to live the best life they can. But as the fall of China made life hard for my ancestors, the rise of China may yet make life hard for me. That is my Yellow Peril.

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Ben Lee

Sometime student, sometime writer, full-time Canberran.