Former refugee Dai Le recounts a Vietnamese saying that was drilled into her as a child: If you hang around ink you become black, if you hang around light you become bright.
She first heard the proverb – about the importance of surrounding yourself with good influences – while growing up in a refugee camp following the fall of Saigon.
Now it is something the Fairfield councillor has been forced to say back to her own mother.
Dai Le, left, with her mother and sisters in Saigon. The family were forced to flee Vietnam.
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Ms Le always knew her mother liked a bet shed been a regular in the backyard gambling dens of 1980s Cabramatta. But she wasnt prepared for the 2013 discovery that it had got out of control.
I said to my mother ‘how did…
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