Destroying Sam Dastyari’s political career has been needlessly nasty
The Australian 12:00am December 15, 2017
Graham Richardson
The unravelling of Sam Dastyari has been an excruciating experience for his many friends. Over two weeks, his life has been picked apart. He has been accused by Peter Dutton of being an agent of influence and by Scott Morrison of being caught cheating on Australia. These are the typically nasty attempts of a government that has had little to cheer about during the past 18 months.
The gloves came off and Dastyari was politically assassinated by a gleeful group of government ministers and a couple of left frontbenchers who should have known better. It is worth noting that the leader of the left, Anthony Albanese, stuck with Dastyari to the end. He was concerned about the principle of forcing out of office a senator who had not been charged with a crime. Given that Linda Burney was given a right-wing seat as part of a deal in which Dastyari had a big role, her intervention will not be forgotten.
None of what I have written above excludes the part played by Dastyari. He took money from a Chinese mystery man to pay his legal bills and he went to this man’s home and told him to leave his phone inside while they went outside to talk. Naive, even stupid — yes. But the idea of labelling Dastyari as some sort of spy is plainly ridiculous. Even if he has resigned from the Senate, if there is evidence of criminal behaviour, he can still be charged. I sincerely doubt that this will happen.
It is probable that Dastyari was involved in something far bigger than he could have imagined and that brings us to the real question. If this fellow, Huang Xiangmo, is an agent of the Chinese government and our intelligence agencies are certain of it, why is he still in the country? If ASIO can advise the government that Dastyari should not be associating with this guy, why has it taken no action against someone who they seem so certain is some kind of spy? These are questions guaranteed to haunt the government when parliament resumes in February.
I do not say this because Dastyari is a close friend but because it is true. No other Senate backbencher has had a better first three years in the upper house than Sam. Without his energy and focus, the chief executives of the big four banks would never have been grilled by a Senate committee about their interest rate gouging on credit cards. He vigorously pursued the idea of a royal commission into the banks and it is happening even as he leaves the Senate. Were it not for Sam, you would never have seen representatives of Apple, Google and Caltex sweating when they tried to answer questions about profit-shifting and managing to pay little or no tax on the fortunes they were making in Australia. This is reaping rewards as more companies start to pay Australian tax.
The NSW branch of the ALP is known for loyalty to its own. Just as tradition would have it, it attempted to circle the wagons around Dastyari. This time the Apaches had the numbers and the defensive perimeter was stretched too far. The Dastyari inner circle consisted of Kaila Murnain, general secretary of the NSW branch and destined for much bigger things in politics; Mark Morey, secretary of Unions NSW; Daniel Mookhey MLC; Bob Nanva, federal secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union; Sam Crosby from the McKell Institute; and his father-in-law, Peter Barron, who had been an integral part of the Wran and Hawke offices. They all spent time with Sam in the 10 days before his announcement.
All of them, as well as my good self, spent every waking moment of those days trying to think of a way of saving Sam. After it became known that he had lost Bill Shorten’s support, Dastyari knew the writing was on the wall. He called Murnain, Morey and Mookhey and they went to Dastyari’s home. Sam is a realist and he knew his time was up. I admire the way he has held up in recent days. Until you have had the blowtorch applied to the belly, you can’t know how hard it is to keep it all together.
As he moved in for the kill, Malcolm Turnbull and some of his ministers went way over the top in bucketing the Chinese. The Chinese embassy furiously hit back at the government by claiming it had no interest in interfering in Australian internal affairs. Australia’s rhetoric on China needs to be carefully crafted and delivered. Much of our wealth depends on our strongest trade relationship. During the next few decades there will be no more voracious consumer of our minerals than China, and we all seem to forget that China is a controlled economy. The Chinese government can quite easily turn off the Australia tap. The US won’t rescue us in that event and neither will Britain or Europe.
The next time the Prime Minister decides to hoe into China, he would be well advised to take three deep breaths and keep his silence. The Chinese are already annoyed, and throwing gratuitous insults at them for cheap political purposes in the Bennelong by-election is a risky business.
By-elections usually occur with the death or permanent resignation of an MP. On this occasion, John Alexander is standing again and he is no doubt a popular local member. Therefore the average by-election swing against the government of 5.7 per cent will be much harder to achieve here. Given that the total swing required to lose the seat is 10 per cent, I can’t quite see how Kristina Keneally gets there.
Alexander should scrape home but it is obviously not the end for Keneally if she loses. I am told there is a very safe vacancy in the Senate she can take if she wants.