The wife of a Sydney retiree sentenced to 12 years in a Vietnamese prison has questioned Prime Minister Scott Morrison on whether the Government’s ‘weak’ response would have been stronger if her husband was a white Australia. 

70-year-old Van Kham Chau was last Monday convicted and sentenced for the “crime of terrorism against the people’s government” in a Ho Chi Minh City courtroom - he will lodge an appeal against the conviction. 

Mr Chau’s wife asked the Prime Minister to do more for her husband, to which he said the government could not intervene with another country’s legal matters. 

 "Whist I understand your diplomatic position, one would have to wonder if my husband were a white Australian that the intervention might not be so weak or reluctant to date," Mrs Chau wrote.