Campaign Letter No.9: The Character Of A Community Leader
CAMPAIGN LETTER No. 9
THE CHARACTER OF A COMMUNITY LEADER
Dear Community Members,
At the General Meeting held on 6 June 2026, alongside many constructive and candid exchanges, an incident occurred that left many attending members deeply concerned about the character of community leadership and prompted a number of them to ask us to speak out. We wish to set out the facts briefly and honestly so that all community members may reflect on them before election day.
What happened at the General Meeting
Four Chung Sức team members attended the General Meeting. This is the legitimate right of every community member and we fully respect it. However what unfolded afterwards made their true purpose very clear.
Rather than raising constructive questions, the Chung Sức Team leader put forward a question of a personal accusatory nature, naming Mrs Hoàng Kim Ánh, the VCA-Vic Advisor, and claiming in substance that Mrs Kim Ánh had labelled her as “red, meaning pro-communist” on social media, before demanding that the Election Organising Committee strip Mrs Kim Ánh of her right to stand as a candidate for 2026-30 term.
Why this matter is very serious
Dear Community Members, within our Vietnamese Community, accusing someone of being “red” or “pro-communist” without evidence is one of the gravest insults that can be directed at a person. This is not an ordinary difference of opinion. It is defamation. It is an attack on the dignity and honour of a person made before a public audience.
Many of you will recall that a former president was previously taken to court on allegations of having defamed and vilified another person as a communist. That case was ultimately dismissed because the person who brought the claim could not produce sufficient evidence.
Now the Chung Sức Team Representative, a councillor who makes laws at the level of local government and who knows full well what defamation means in Australian law, came to a Community General Meeting and accused Mrs Kim Ánh of labelling her as “red, meaning pro-communist”, without producing a single piece of evidence. We are currently holding the written question that the Team Representative wrote by hand at the General Meeting. Given the precedent of the court case referred to above, the outcome of any future proceedings may well run in the opposite direction.
What happened at the General Meeting
In my capacity as Chairperson of the General Meeting, I had every right to bring that line of questioning to an immediate end and to ask the Team Representative to apologise to Mrs Kim Ánh for two very clear reasons. First, a General Meeting is not the appropriate forum for adjudicating personal disputes between individuals. Second, under Australian law, the chairperson of a public meeting bears indirect responsibility if defamatory statements that damage the reputation of another person are allowed to proceed unchecked.
However, in the interests of handling the matter transparently before the Community Meeting and avoiding any suggestion that I was silencing a member, I asked Mrs Kim Ánh whether she wished to respond. Mrs Kim Ánh shook her head, indicating that she did not consider a response necessary, and that she was content to allow the Team Representative to reveal her own conduct before the entire Meeting.
Our assessment
The Election Organising Committee and the Constitution Committee both agreed that this was a personal matter between two individuals, one that should not be brought into community affairs and certainly not raised at a General Meeting. I share that view entirely. If the Team Representative genuinely believed that Mrs Kim Ánh had defamed her, the proper course of action was to pursue the matter through the legal system, not to use the public platform of a General Meeting to pressure an opponent.
Nevertheless the Chung Sức Team Representative continued to shake her head and persisted in demanding that Mrs Kim Ánh be stripped of her right to stand as a candidate. That is an attitude inconsistent with the spirit of democracy and mutual respect that should characterise our community gatherings.
After the General Meeting I spoke privately with Mrs Kim Ánh and asked why she had shaken her head and declined to respond. Mrs Kim Ánh said plainly that she had never called the Team Representative “red” or suggested that she was “pro-communist”, and that the accusation was nothing more than a baseless attempt to damage her reputation ahead of the election.
The character of a leader
Dear Community Members, I wish to say something plainly.
Over the past three and a half years I have received a lot of criticism, and there have even been those who labelled me a communist. But I have never confronted anyone over those remarks. Not because I lack the ability to defend myself. But because I know clearly who I am, what I have done, what I am doing and what I will do. The responsibility of a community leader is to serve the common good, not to win arguments with individuals. Those who praise me, I thank. Those who criticise me, I listen to. Those who defame me, I leave to time and truth to answer.
That is the character I believe a leader of the Free Vietnamese Community must have.
By contrast, the fact that the Chung Sức Team Representative deliberately used the public platform of the General Meeting to make unsubstantiated personal accusations against an opponent, and then persisted in demanding that the opponent be disqualified when those demands were not met, speaks very clearly to how she would conduct herself in leading our Community over the next four years.
A community leader is not someone who applauds those who praise them and fights without restraint against those who do not. A community leader is someone who places the interests of the community above all else, including above their own pride.
Dear Community Members,
We have set out the facts of what occurred at the General Meeting so that you have the full picture when you cast your vote. A vote is not simply a choice of executive committee. It is a choice of character and direction for our Community over the next four years. We ask you to reflect carefully before making your decision.
On Sunday 28 June 2026, we respectfully invite you to cast your vote for Team No. 1: the Community Building and Development Team.
ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER TO VOTE. VOTE IN NUMBERS. VOTE WISELY. CHOOSE WELL.
Yours sincerely,
Nguyễn Quang Duy
Team Representative and incumbent President of Vietnamese Community in Victoria
