 The council leader Paul Spooner responded by saying that he had needed to act quickly in order to travel to China with Lu, and the whole council voted not to accept financial assistance for travel costs offered by Dongying.In June 2019, Lu's connection to Liaoning was being used by the county of Surrey to push a partnership for the county with the Chinese province.In 2016, Lu's pay and bonuses at the University of Queensland, totalling AUS$736,600, came under fire in a piece discussing the university "crying poor ... [but giving] their senior executives larger and larger pay packets while doing everything in their power to squeeze the salaries of their employees"; the article noted that Lu and many of his peers earned more than the heads of government departments and business CEOs.