Monday 5 September 2022 04:43 AM Vietnamese refugee Dai Le cries, slams Kristina Keneally and Covid lockdowns in ... trends now
The refugee who defeated Kristina Keneally in a battler seat has choked up when recalling how she almost drowned fleeing Vietnam.
Dai Le won the seat of Folwer in southwest Sydney on May 21 over the former NSW premier Labor tried to parachute in from her rich island enclave 70km away.
The independent MP took a swipe at Ms Keneally in her maiden speech to parliament on Monday, and also compared Covid lockdowns to the tyrannical regime she fled as a child.
Ms Le donned traditional Vietnamese clothing printed with a with an Australian flag as dozens of supporters cheered her from the House of Representatives gallery.
New MP Dai Le donned traditional Vietnamese clothing printed with a with an Australian flag as dozens of supporters cheered her from the House of Representatives gallery
She recounted how she escaped the Fall of Saigon in April 1975 on a rickety boat to Hong Kong with her mother and two younger sisters.
He father, a lawyer working for the Americans, didn't make it on to the boat and she never saw him again.
'I remember running with my mother and two younger sisters, scrambling to make our way on to a boat and pushing through the cries and screams of women and children. I had no idea what was happening,' she said.
'All I can recall are the cries, the panic, the chaos and one moment on the boat when I turned around to look back at my birth country to try to comprehend what was happening and just saw big, black smoke in the distance.
'I remember the moment I thought we would die when a big storm hit our boat.'
Ms Le's voice cracked as she recalled holding on to the boat for dear life with her sister as the boat rocked and her mother held my other sister tightly in her arms.
'I remember being soaking wet lying under the tarp as the ocean hit us and the rain poured down,' she said.
'I remember how my face almost hit the ocean as our boat rocked so hard from the storm and I remember my mother warning that I had to hold on to my sister and a plastic canister, just in case the boat tipped over, until we could find one another.
'Trying to peer through the tarp, all I could hear was the storm and [I] was terrified we wouldn't survive as none of us could swim.
Ms Le's voice cracked as she recalled holding on to the boat for dear life with her sister as the boat rocked and her mother held my other sister tightly in her arms
'My mother kept praying, prayer beads in hand, as the boat continued to rock. The ocean was pitch dark, and all that I could think of was that I was going to fall into this black abyss.
'I kept praying in my heart that should the boat tip over, I would still cling to my sister, and I would still find my mother.
'The storm
