BENNELONG'S influential Chinese community wants its local member — Prime Minister John Howard — to take a stronger line with China over its human rights abuses.

The community told Mr Howard yesterday that Australia needed to do more to publicly condemn organ harvesting and other violations.

Mr Howard was at the Ryde-Eastwood Leagues Club for another public appearance in his now-marginal electorate, this one a question-and-answer session with a carefully vetted local audience.

Arriving in West Ryde shortly after 10.30am with his wife, Janette, Mr Howard was afforded a standing ovation by the 300-strong audience.

After a brief address, during which he stressed that his Government was focused on its future not its past, he threw open the floor to questions.

"If you've got a bit of advice you want to give me about running the country, you please go right ahead and give it to me," he said.

For more than an hour, Mr Howard answered questions on the economy, skills shortages and education funding.

At one stage, he was interrupted by a young woman with a disability walking up and hugging him in the middle of a response to a question about Australia's ageing population.

With the starting gun set to fire on an election campaign any day now, the Prime Minister is talking directly to electors more and more, a move away from the tightly controlled, carefully choreographed modus operandi of most Australian politics. He held a similar public question time at an event in Melbourne recently.

But yesterday's Q&A was hardly the equivalent of taking to a stump on the banks of the Yarra.

Audience members were carefully screened, for "security reasons" The Age was told (presumably to keep The Chaser or Labor Party plants out) — and those who were allowed to attend were identified by a red sticker worn on their clothing.

Some of the questions put to Mr Howard could have been written at Liberal Party HQ, such was their partisanship, but others, on issues such as disability services and dental waiting lists, were more taxing.

But questions about China dominated the session.

One man said to the Prime Minister: "There's a great crime going on in China, it's the crime of organ harvesting. Can you please convince me the Australian Government is doing something about it?"

A woman asked: "Will your Government push for a third-party intervention in China, because of this new form of evil?"

All told, four questions out of 20 related to China.

In response, Mr Howard said he "totally opposed" organ harvesting as abhorrent, and said Australia had maintained a human rights dialogue with the Chinese Government.

"And on regular occasions we make it plain that there are aspects of human rights abuse in China with which we do not agree and of which we are highly critical."

He said Australia was prepared to disagree with its biggest trading partner, citing the defection of the Chinese consulate official who sought, and was granted, political asylum in Australia, and the Prime Minister's decision to meet the Dalai Lama, as decisions taken in opposition to China's wishes.

"But the best way to get progress in these things is not to engage in a whole lot of public lecturing and public hectoring. That does not work. We think the best way to get improvements in human rights in countries like China is to engage the Chinese authorities."

Bennelong has a large and politically active Chinese community.

Nearly 10,000 people, more than 7 per cent of the electorate, are Chinese-born. Australia-wide, 1 per cent of the population was born in China. In Bennelong, 8.3 per cent of people speak Cantonese as their first language at home and 6.4 per cent Mandarin, compared with 1.2 per cent and 1.1 per cent nationally.