Unmade in China
A politically connected association promoting links between
China and Australia - what could be wrong with that? Plenty.
William Birnbauer reports.
FOR retired police superintendent Peter Magerl, it all started
to unravel when he and two Australian women working in Beijing
confronted their employer, Michael Guo, over irregularities in
their visas and contracts.
Screaming profanities and abuse, Guo ordered them out of his
office and into the Australian International Trade Association’s
conference room. Enraged, he smashed several tea cups, then broke a
teapot and advanced on one of the Australian women, Armina Jackson,
and thrust the jagged end towards her face.
“He has this fixation eyes went like snake eyes and he
started really quickly to walk towards Armina,” Magerl recalls. “I
picked up my chair, moved forward, the women got behind me and I
stuck the chair in his chest. I said, ‘Call the police’.”
Shaken, the three locked themselves in a nearby office until
security staff and police arrived. The Australian embassy sent an
interpreter. No assault charges were laid because under Chinese law
victims have to be physically injured.
Michael Guo agrees he smashed tea cups that day. “It’s my cup. I
want to smash, I will smash,” he told The Sunday Age,
arguing that he was justified because the three had refused to
leave his office when requested. “These people are just like crazy
dogs %26#133;”
The confrontation ended a chaotic, exciting but troubling five
months for Magerl as a project officer in Beijing for the
Australian International Trade Association, an organisation that
promotes educational, trade and political exchanges between China
and Australia. It was also the start of a frustrating 2%26#189;-year
quest by Magerl to expose the seemingly formidable and politically
connected association as a house of cards.
In his 37 years as a cop, Magerl learned about hunting justice.
To begin, it’s often the little things inconsistencies, a
throw-away comment, a discarded cigarette butt that
ultimately trap crooks. From little things, big things grow.
Secondly, persistence and patience pay off. Back in Australia,
retired and with time on his hands, he started what he calls his
“little personal project” investigating AITA.
It had begun when, after nearly four decades as a South
Australian policeman and another four years managing an Adelaide
nursing agency, Magerl applied for a position that seemed almost
too good to be true: one that satisfied an itch to travel to China
and to teach.
He was impressed by AITA’s honorary board, which included
high-profile politicians Julie Bishop, Bronwyn Bishop and Laurie
Ferguson. He conducted company searches, ran several checks: it
seemed genuine.
Just before they left for China, Guo asked him to be a project
officer instead of teaching English. He agreed.
The first months were mind-boggling. His job was to organise 10
to 12-day visits to Australia, with the obligatory sightseeing, for
high-level Chinese government officials and agency staff. The trips
would be led by Michael Guo or his brother, Steven, whose Sydney
travel agency, Morning Calm Travel, booked some of the trips.
The job also involved inviting foreign embassy staff in Beijing
to dinners and functions hosted by visiting Australian politicians.
“It was a buzz,” he says. “It was pandemonium and disorganised”
a nonstop round of toasts, handshakes, meetings and
banquets. China was brimming with opportunity, particularly in
education. Australia had the expertise; China the hunger to learn.
AITA aimed to bring the two together.
At first, the former policeman got on well with Michael Guo: he
was dynamic, a workaholic with a zest for life. “His China network
is vast,” Magerl says. “Guo’s goal is to create a network of
Australian educational providers and Chinese educational
institutions with AITA acting as the agent, receiving a commission
on every student enrolled in an offshore or onshore educational
product.”
Other Australians who have dealt with Guo confirm he has top
level contacts across a wide network of organisations in China. One
said Guo could arrange meetings with the mayors of Beijing and
Shanghai at short notice. Guo maintains his aim is to do good
things for Australia.
Guo’s marketing strategy, according to Magerl, was
straightforward: mention “the big potatoes” honorary board
members such as Bronwyn Bishop and Laurie Ferguson and
they’ll come running.
The first hint that something was not right came in March 2005,
about a month after he started, when then Tasmanian federal MP
Harry Quick arrived. As with other “delegations” led by Victorian
MP Ken Smith and then federal MP Kelly Hoare, there actually were
no delegates accompanying Quick, despite “an incredible amount of
lobbying”.
AITA’s 30 Chinese staff organised an impressive list of guests
from about 150 government agencies, associations and non-government
bodies to attend a reception for Quick. Despite repeated calls to
the Australian embassy for a representative to attend, Magerl
couldn’t get anyone to go. Michael Guo pressed him hard to try, but
everyone at the embassy was “too busy”.
“It didn’t make sense. Why would AITA, an organisation obviously
hand in glove with Austrade, so I thought, and with the political
support be so badly treated?” What Magerl didn’t know then was that
the Australian Government and embassy had effectively blacklisted
AITA.
Soon after, Magerl took calls from Chinese schools complaining
that some teachers recruited by AITA and posted to regional schools
were drunks. Teachers also called, complaining about late payments
of wages.
Maureen Armstrong, previously a senior public servant, was
contracted to teach by Guo while visiting Magerl in Beijing. She
agreed to teach a summer school in Jiangsu Province and teach at
another school the following semester. She left for Jiangsu with
boxes of syllabus books provided by Guo.
To work in China, foreigners must obtain a Z-class visa and work
permit. L-class visas for tourists and F-class business visas were
not valid working visas. Armstrong demanded a Z-visa before
accepting a further teaching post. Rather than help, Guo reacted
angrily, Armstrong reported in a letter to Kym Hewett, a senior
trade commissioner with Austrade in Beijing.
“In a telephone conversation he used threatening and
intimidating language, telling me not to apply ‘the philosophy of
Australia here this is China’,” she wrote.
He threatened not to even extend her tourist visa, which would
have left her in the country illegally. “This caused me great
anxiety and distress as my passport was at his office in Beijing, a
12-hour journey from Jiangsu.” She determined to return to Beijing
and quit.
Guo accuses Armstrong of using the visa as an excuse for
breaching a contract and leaving about 100 children and a school in
the lurch. “She signed the contract and the class was ready for her
to teach; she refused to go to that particular school,” he
says.
At the same time Armina Jackson, who had arranged a three-year
stay in China, was hired by AITA as a project officer. She found
herself sharing an apartment contrary to her employment conditions,
and in a different role to the one she had been promised. She
discovered she was in China on a three-month business visa “that
does not entitle me to work”.
Furious, Jackson emailed Guo in late July 2005. “Now I see that
really you deceived me from the beginning,” she wrote. “I have made
a major lifestyle change, gave up my job and left my home at great
expense to me had I known what the actual truth was in all
of this I would never have made the decision I did.”
She quit, demanding compensation. Michael Guo responded on July
25 with an email that began, “Armina, you are a very nasty person”
and demanded she move out of her apartment. “You could ask the
Australian embassy find you a five-star hotel for you to live if
they wish. But it is my apartment, move out!!!!!!”
It was Armstrong and Jackson who accompanied Magerl when they
confronted the cup-smashing Michael Guo on August 8, 2005.
Magerl says Armstrong realised “something was amiss” in the
educational material she had been given. Some CDs were blank. She
found that some of the unreferenced material, branded under the
AITA label, was part of the Victorian Government’s Certificate in
English for Vocational Education and Further Studies program. Guo
last week failed to answer a question about this from The Sunday
Age.
Back in Australia, Magerl launched a relentless and frustrating
campaign to expose and shut down AITA. He wrote to politicians,
trade and educational organisations, government bodies and to
members of the honorary board and politicians who led delegations
to China on behalf of AITA. Hardly any responded.
He wrote to then prime minister John Howard and Opposition
leader Kevin Rudd, pleading for “an honest politician who has the
courage to address my complaint”.
WITH no one willing to act, Magerl turned to doing his
own detective work. From little things, big things grow. He
discovered AITA was registered as both a company and an
association. Associations, he knew, had to operate not-for-profit
and have a properly constituted committee. Magerl could not find
any committee members so he hired a private investigator to track
them down if they existed.
After months of roadblocks and refusals to divulge the
information by Steven Guo, AITA’s public officer, and Michael Guo,
he was informed in December last year by the NSW Attorney-General’s
office that court proceedings had been launched under a section of
the Associations Incorporation Act relating to the failure to
produce documents.
Magerl didn’t stop. He launched a civil action against Michael
Guo, Steven Guo and AITA to recover $5500 in air fares, lost
income, visa fees and emergency accommodation costs arising from
his time in Beijing.
After months of cat-and-mouse games, last October he obtained a
warrant for sheriffs to seize property. At the last minute, Steven
Guo’s lawyer obtained a stay pending an appeal against a judgement
awarded to Magerl. While at it, Magerl lodged a complaint with the
NSW Bar Association against Guo’s lawyer.
He chipped away, sparking investigations by a Victorian
Government department into alleged copyright breaches in the
educational material used by AITA. The Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission examined the association’s job
advertisements.
Magerl has been bitterly disappointed by the lack of response
and accountability by the politicians on AITA’s honorary board and
those who have led delegations to China. Within a month of his
alerting former Labor MP Kelly Hoare about the events, she led a
“delegation” to China, he says.
Bass MP Ken Smith also returned to China for AITA, despite being
contacted by Magerl.
“For me, the importance was and I thought it would be
easy to draw it to someone’s attention in government so they
could take action. I took it on as a project for no other reason
than there are a lot of little people in the system that have been
hurt,” Magerl says. “These people aren’t going to get away with
it.”
Mates in high places?
%26#9632;JULIE BISHOP, deputy federal Opposition leader.
Listed on AITA’s website as overseas trade adviser and honorary
board member.
She said: “This organisation provided an economy-class airfare
from Sydney to Beijing, plus accommodation, as part of a January
2003 trade delegation %26#133; When brought to my attention several
years ago that my name was listed on their website, I wrote to the
organisation formally requesting that the reference be
removed.”
%26#9632;LAURIE FERGUSON, parliamentary secretary of
Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services. Listed on AITA’s
website as general adviser, Australian promotion, and an honorary
board member.
His spokesman, Khaldoun Hajaj, said: “Mr Ferguson is in fact a
patron of this organisation. The titles that appear to be provided
on the website are essentially unknown to Mr Ferguson. Mr Ferguson
does not act in any form or capacity to promote this
organisation.
“Mr Ferguson’s engagement with this group has essentially
evolved around occasionally helping them set up meetings and things
like lunches and dinners at Parliament House when they have
requested it. Following news of this inquiry, Mr Ferguson is now in
the process of reconsidering his association with this group.”
%26#9632;BRONWYN BISHOP, federal Opposition spokeswoman on
veterans’ affairs. Listed on AITA’s website as general adviser,
Australian promotion, and an honorary board member
Ms Bishop was unavailable for comment, despite repeated requests
from The Sunday Age.
%26#9632;HARRY QUICK, former Tasmanian federal MP. He gave
a keynote speech at an AITA reception in China in 2005.
Roger Joseph, his office manager, said: “Harry did do a trip to
China %26#133; and I organised at least one reception in Parliament
House for one of their delegations to meet with people. We were
then contacted by two people inside China, who had gone from
Australia, about using the wrong visas and that sort of thing.
“Once we started getting that sort of material, we severed all
contact with them.”
%26#9632; KEVIN RUDD, Prime Minister. Pictured with Michael
Guo at a fund-raiser for former Labour MP Kelly Hoare.
His spokesman, Tim Gleason, said: “Mr Rudd has no connection
with AITA other than speaking at two or three events where AITA
members were in attendance. Mr Guo was in attendance at least one
of those events. Mr Rudd has never accepted free travel from
AITA.”
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Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 12:15 am under