Campaign Letter No.6: Where Is The Vietnamese Community In Australia Heading?
CAMPAIGN LETTER NUMBER 6
Liên Danh Xây Dựng và Phát Triển Cộng Đồng (Build and Develop Community Team)
WHERE IS THE VIETNAMESE COMMUNITY IN AUSTRALIA HEADING?
Dear Community Members,
We recently received an article whose author raises the question of whether the upcoming election is an opportunity for us to decide what kind of community we want to build.
Having read the article carefully, we believe it is not a neutral analysis. It is, in effect, a letter of strategic advice quietly addressed to the Chung Sức Team, suggesting that to win, they should avoid talking about the ideals of freedom and instead focus on welfare services, social support and attracting newly arrived Vietnamese residents.
We feel it is our responsibility to be clear with you: this election is about the identity of our Community, not about competing welfare programmes. No Team can promise more in terms of grants, services or government funding, because those matters belong to the Australian Government, not to the Executive Committee of the Vietnamese Community in Australia Victoria Chapter.
1. The Yellow Flag with Three Red Stripes
The author of the article shares that he likes the Yellow Flag because he sees it as an image of Yellowen sunshine, paddy fields and the three regions of Vietnam, north, central and south. We acknowledge his goodwill. However, the National Flag of the Republic of Vietnam is not a landscape painting for each person to interpret according to personal preference.
That flag was raised on warships and border outposts during the bloody struggle against North Vietnamese communist aggression. After the fall of the country, in re-education camps, countless South Vietnamese people were forced to hide that flag deep within their bleeding hearts.
That flag accompanied our refugees across dark and terrifying voyages by sea in search of freedom. Many of us wept when, after years, we saw that beloved flag flying once more in the refugee camps where we had found Freedom.
To reinterpret the meaning of the flag as something lighter, something more universally acceptable, whether by accident or by design, is a way of slowly erasing the memory of those who gave their lives for it.
The Xây Dựng và Phát Triển Team affirms without reservation: the Yellow Flag with Three Red Stripes is the sacred symbol of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, carrying the full weight of history, of righteous cause and of the dignity of a people who refused to be broken. That is not something open to negotiation or reinterpretation.
2. Vietnamese people who have recently settled in Australia
Over many years, our Community has actively supported and advocated for a great number of residency and refugee applications. That spirit of mutual care and solidarity is something we have always valued and will continue to uphold.
We understand that today there are many newcomers arriving from Vietnam under various visa categories, including students, skilled workers and family reunion applicants. They need employment, housing and a path to integration, and those are entirely legitimate needs. The current Executive Committee has been and continues to open our doors to welcome these people into community life.
We should share something with you. We are people who have been connected to this Community for more than forty years, and we participated in the foundational debates of the early days, including the question of why we chose the name Free Vietnamese rather than Vietnamese refugees. The answer from those days remains just as true today. From the very beginning, the founders of this Community wanted to open their arms to Vietnamese people who came later, to anyone who had to leave their homeland for one simple and honourable reason: they wanted to live freely in Australia. The name Free Vietnamese was an expression of that generosity, a generosity grounded in principle, not a generosity that loses itself.
However, we also need to draw your attention to a more complex reality. Younger generations who grew up in Vietnam have been shaped over many decades by a communist education system, and as a result they have not had access to the truth of history. At the same time, some young people who came to Australia as children or who were born here have gradually grown distant, and some have forgotten the hard and blood soaked lessons that explain why their parents and grandparents left everything behind and risked their lives to reach the shores of freedom.
It is precisely for this reason that we must hold firm to our principles, not to exclude anyone, but to help the next generations understand the historical lessons of their forebears, and to protect our Community from infiltration from the outside.
This is not an imaginary concern. We invite you to search on Google for Decision 1334/QD-TTg signed by Vietnamese communist Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang on 23 October 2023, and you will see clearly the systematic strategy of the Hanoi regime to extend its reach and control over Vietnamese organisations overseas, including our Community here in Victoria.
In response to that reality, the 2024 Constitution sets out four Founding Principles and eight Objectives as ideals that cannot be bargained away or compromised. This is the protective document that our community passed with 75.15 percent of votes in favour, and it is precisely why the Xây Dựng và Phát Triển Team will never allow the 2024 Constitution to be treated lightly or eroded step by step.
Our Community as an organisation must have a clear political stance. That stance is the spirit of Freedom, the dignity of those who reject communism, and the Yellow Flag with Three Red Stripes. These are the soul of a Community that has endured for more than half a century. Anyone who wishes to share that soul is warmly and wholeheartedly welcome. But we will never agree that our Community should change its identity to accommodate a different majority.
3. Our commitment
Returning to the question the article raised: what kind of community do we actually want to build? Our answer is clear and will not change.
If our community continues to place its trust in us, the Xây Dựng và Phát Triển Team solemnly commits to continuing to honour the Yellow Flag with Three Red Stripes as a symbol that cannot be violated, and to never allowing anyone to reinterpret or diminish the historical and righteous meaning of that flag. We commit to preserving our identity as refugees from communism as a foundation that cannot be negotiated away, because to forget our origins is the first step toward losing who we are. And we commit to protecting the unity of our Community, which over the past three years we have worked so hard to rebuild after years of painful division.
A Community that cares for those living today while never forgetting those who fell yesterday. A Community that knows where it came from and therefore knows where it is going. That is the Community we have built, are building, and will continue to build and develop.
On Sunday 28 June 2026, we respectfully invite you to cast your vote for Team Number 1: Xây Dựng và Phát Triển Cộng Đồng.
BRING YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO VOTE. VOTE IN LARGE NUMBERS. VOTE WISELY. CHOOSE THE WORTHY.
Yours sincerely,
Nguyen Quang Duy
Team Authorised Representative and incumbent President Vietnamese Community in Australia Victoria Chapter
