00:02Hungry Panda is a food delivery company. Now it was actually founded in the United Kingdom
00:07but since then it's grown exponentially throughout the West. So it's now operating in a number
00:12of countries including the US and Australia. It largely operates as a food delivery service.
00:18In other words if you want a often delicious piping hot meal from an Asian eatery then
00:24Hungry Panda is one of the companies you can go to to get it delivered to you normally
00:28by a rider. It's very popular with Chinese diasporas including Chinese international
00:33students in countries like Australia and the US but it has come under scrutiny over its
00:38industrial practices. We've seen over the last few years a number of informal and sometimes
00:43formal industrial disputes. Riders have accused Hungry Panda of not paying them a sufficient
00:49wage saying that its algorithm is difficult to understand and opaque and in some instances
00:55we've seen Hungry Panda taken to court over for example unfair dismissal claims. There
01:00was also an incident a few years ago where there was a major compensation payout for a
01:06Hungry Panda driver who was killed in Sydney while he was on the job. So there's been plenty
01:11of controversy around this company and there have been various efforts to organise by riders
01:17who say that there needs to be more scrutiny placed upon the company to ensure that its labour
01:22practices aren't exploitative. So what has happened to these riders and what has this intervention
01:29been from Chinese police? Yeah it's a rather surreal episode in some ways but what's happened
01:36is that over the last few weeks a number of riders in Sydney have been discussing on WeChat, the
01:42Chinese messaging app, plans to hold some sort of protest against Hungry Panda or at least
01:47to effectively stop working during the Chinese New Year period which is of course upon us
01:53right now. The idea being that this would give them a bit more leverage because it's such
01:56a busy period of time for the company. But a number of those riders have approached the
02:02ABC recently to essentially say when they started to discuss this on WeChat the Chinese police
02:09intervened. Now it's worth pointing out these riders who are in these discussions are largely
02:14Chinese nationals. They're not Australian citizens. They're people who are here typically on temporary
02:19visas who are working, who in some instances have retained their Chinese numbers. And nonetheless
02:25they say that as a result of these discussions many of them got calls from the Chinese police,
02:31often from their home provinces back in China. Police often ask them, what are you doing?
02:36Why are you planning a protest? In one instance at least a Chinese rider effectively had their
02:41family members called into a police station in China to try and apparently place pressure
02:48on them not to protest. This is really quite an extraordinary state of affairs because we
02:53have seen the Chinese government of course in many instances try and pressure the diaspora
02:59here in Australia. But that tends to be over more sensitive political issues. What's happening
03:03here is for whatever reason the Chinese government or at the very least Chinese police appear to
03:09be inserting themselves into an informal industrial dispute in Australia that happens to catch
03:15up a large number of Chinese nationals. So it is in some ways a bewildering but certainly
03:20a really interesting development.
03:22So why would the Chinese government care about this issue? And do we know why these calls were
03:29made to Hungry Panda workers?
03:31Look, the short answer is we don't know or at the very least it's difficult to say for certain.
03:37It's possible there's been some speculation that for whatever reason the Chinese government
03:42would want to ensure that Hungry Panda didn't deal with any, have to deal with these sort
03:48of difficulties. So that's something that's been raised by the Greens for example who say
03:52that there is a danger that powerful global interests and commercial interests, remembering
03:57Hungry Panda of course is backed by private enterprise and by hedge funds and investors from across
04:02the world, not just in China, that they might be using connections in China to try and stop
04:07this from happening. That's a possibility. But the ABC has no evidence, despite pretty extensive
04:13investigations, that Hungry Panda has actually engineered this in any way. There's no direct
04:19connection we can find between the company itself and these phone calls. Another possibility,
04:24of course, is that the Chinese authorities simply picked up this chatter on Chinese social
04:30media and decided that they didn't want to see Chinese nationals protesting in any sort
04:35of unauthorised activity in Sydney or in Australia, full stop. They thought that that could bring
04:40some, you know, that this could have political ramifications that were unpredictable for them
04:45and that they did not want to see. So it's possible that Chinese authorities intervened simply
04:49on principle to make sure that these, make sure these protests didn't go ahead, didn't
04:54go ahead.
04:55And Stephen, has there been any political response to these developments?
05:00There has been some political response. We've heard from the Greens, for example, this morning,
05:05David Shoebridge, the Greens Senator, saying essentially that it's a troubling development and that
05:10it emphasises the need for, you know, so-called gig workers or workers who are effectively contractors,
05:16like those working for Hungry Panda, to be given better protections. There's a broader
05:21story here about that whole industrial landscape, which we don't have time to go into now.
05:25And we've also heard from Tony Sheldon, who's a Labor Senator, who's been pressing Hungry
05:30Panda on some of these issues for a long time. Tony Sheldon said that these allegations are,
05:35of course, disturbing and that the federal government takes a strong stance against foreign interference
05:40of any kind, saying workers have the right here, either formally or informally, to organise
05:46and to protest. But we haven't yet heard from any senior federal government front benches.
05:51The Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, declined to comment. It's possible we may see a little
05:55bit more political reaction later today. But for now, this episode remains in some ways
06:01as opaque and confusing as it is interesting.
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