After Labor Senator Sam Dastyari’s resignation statement today in Sydney, lingering questions remain: what took him so long, and why didn’t Opposition Leader Bill Shorten insist on his resignation sooner?
Shorten should’ve known that simply relegating Dastyari to the backbench, as he did last week, would be insufficient after it emerged that he had lied about contradicting Labor policy in a private briefing with Chinese journalists.
This was on top of accepting money for personal expenses from a Chinese political donor, and subsequently advising the same donor his phone was tapped by the intelligence services.
Dastyari had been stood down once before. He should never have been returned to a position of responsibility after serving a brief penance on the backbench.
Shorten allowed the Dastyari matter to linger for more than a week after Fairfax unearthed further evidence of his inappropriate dealings with the Chinese donor.
He should’ve acted more decisively to avoid suggestions he was yielding to factional pressures to protect Dastyari whose position had become, in any case, untenable.
Effectively, Shorten’s and Dastyari’s hands were forced when prominent figures in the Labor Party demanded he “consider his position’’.
Dastyari was also on the end of a factional leak when it was revealed he had sought to pressure then foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek back in 2015 not to meet a Chinese human rights critic in Hong Kong.
Plibersek is from the left, Dastyari from the right.
By Monday of this week the Labor Senator’s goose was cooked. All that remained was for him to endeavour to salvage some dignity as he walked out the door citing “Labor values’’ as justification for his departure.
What all this demonstrates is that, when it comes to money politics, what this country needs is a National Integrity Commission as a deterrent and a warning to public officials their actions will come under increased scrutiny.
“what took him so long, and why didn’t Opposition Leader Bill Shorten insist on his resignation sooner?” Unlike you Tony I am assuming that there were other factors in play – factors such as who is the judge in these matters:- You, Malcolm, Dutton, Frydenberg (who has his own problems and they are about to get bigger), Pyne, Brandis?
I didn’t ever notice Walker and the media pack demand Howard resign over his illegal war on Iraq. Sam must think he is still in Iran where the security services hound and harass any opposition.
Never mind ‘what took so long?’, how about “why was it thought not unOK?“?
A political party doesn’t have the power to kick anyone out of Parliament.
One of the pluses out of this is that Turnbull is making noises of interest in an ICAC, or more an IBAC based on the Victorian model.
Makes it a bit hard for him to prosecute Dastyari while saying there is no need for an Integrity Commission of any sort. Not that hypocrisy is difficult for a pollie, just harder to justify.
And so we can wait to see if Labor and the Greens can get him to create such a Commission, and then watch as the LNP body count starts to mount up under their scrutiny.
There could be some good out of this after all.
This article leaves so many questions unanswered. The first would have to be why the focus on the actions of Labor who are not making decisions about our national interest without the media scrutinising the level of donations from the same donor to the Liberal Party who managed the country when the Port of Darwin was sold to the Chinese. Ie real impact on Australia’s security by real government ministers and officials. If it is so bad for Bill Shorten to attend a dinner prior to the sign off on the China free trade agreement then what of that agreement itself which was negotiated by the LNP? Why was the information against Sam Dastyari leaked now and was there racism against him as a non-Anglo non -Christian bloke – unspoken of course? Who leaked the information and is there going to be any kind of police investigation although as we know from the Michaelia Cash raiding of the AWU this is likely to lead nowhere anyway. The utilisation of of Australian Police and Security Agencies is surely the bigger story in all this and yet the media finds it far less attractive than hounding Sam Dastyari from the Senate. This article is yet more of the same. The fish is truly rotting from the head and the stink will not go away by the resignation of Sam Dastyari.
Yes. These questions require answers. Also as Malcolm denied last night (qanda) the leak came from ASIO was it the US? Do they spy on our politicians and/or citizens, others within our borders? How much money was paid to the NLP by Chinese interests during the time the 99 year lease of Darwin Port was being negotiated?
the only difference between chinese and U.S pressure on australian governments and politicians is the methods used, china uses trade deals and political donations, the U.S uses bluster and bullying to get their way, this mob of cowards now in government here are a pushover for donald trump and his republican thugs.
I agree with all the points you raise here. This story more than any other so far of late has been the most disturbing for the complete failure of the 4th Estate. I searched high and low for balance. This journal did not provide it. It was as though I was strolling through a blind in one eye, amnesiac press and I for one will not pay to read one sided propaganda. I have ended my subscription on that basis. This treatment of Sam that he lost his job as so many crooks and wroughters from the govt sit on their back bench as ex ministers, could not have been achieved without the bias of the media in this instance. I saw an Iranian immigrant run out of parliament today with the media running along behind fanning the flames while no other, who we all know have got up to the same stuff, with rolex watches and ipads and the rest of it, copped the same treatment, I for one wont forget it or forgive it, and await a true journal who will call out the security services and the hypocrisy. I live in the north and many of us are not all in on banging up China for brownie points with a police state mentality where political enemies are smeared by ‘public intelligence’. I grew up in a the ‘police state’ that was Bjelke Petersen and here we have his love child Dutton at the helm of this stuff. Where is the fourth estate when you need them. That way we wouldn’t need another ICAC at all.
Very well said, Coral…agree 110%.
Not only is Crikey complicit in this saga, but the ABC behaviour is appalling..,fair and balanced, my ass!!