Piers Akerman: Sam ‘Shanghai’ Dastyari is on Santa’s naughty list
SANTA’S having a torrid time at the North Pole sorting the good from the bad but Labor Senator Sam Dastyari has made the job easier — he definitely falls into the capital “B” Bad column, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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SANTA’S having a torrid time at the North Pole sorting the good from the bad but Labor Senator Sam Dastyari has made the job easier — he definitely falls into the capital “B” Bad column.
Not that the Labor spin machine hasn’t done its best to whitewash Shanghai Sam and blacken the reputations of those who have pointed out the painful truth — calling those who realistically point out the dangers of Chinese influence on Australia’s politicians as racist.
Oh, and if the expressions “whitewash” and “blacken” are now politically incorrect, suck it up snowflakes, political correctness is so over.
As Sino Sam sidles off on his taxpayer-funded holiday to soak up as much as he can from the public purse before actually quitting the Senate next year because of the damage he has caused to the Labor Party, the myth-makers are already peddling the line that he was some sort of saint leading a crusade against the banks on behalf of injured consumers.
My friend Graham Richardson, the former Labor senator and party fixer who never shied from admitting he did “whatever it takes” for the ALP, strayed into the realms of romantic folk tales last week when he wrote: “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.”
I’ll let Richo down lightly. The banking royal commission had its genesis in events which took place before Dastyari entered federal parliament on August 21, 2013, as part of a backroom deal by the NSW Labor Right that saw him replace Matt Thistlethwaite, who had resigned the seat earlier that month to contest the Lower House seat of Kingsford Smith in that year’s federal election.
More specifically, the ball was set rolling years earlier in 2009, by NSW National Party Senator John “Wacka” Williams, who instigated the Senate Economics References committee inquiry into the role of administrators and liquidators.
Two years later he repeated his call for a Royal Commission into white collar crime with a withering assessment of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) for a lack of action by industry regulators and passed on a file of statutory declarations alleging wrongdoing to the Australian Federal Police and the NSW Fraud Squad.
“Unfortunately there is no confidence in the industry regulators like ASIC anymore,” he said.
“I hope the federal government acts on white collar crime because it is destroying people’s lives. To do nothing would be a green light for the illegal activities to continue.”
Further, Senator Dastyari actually voted against a motion for the Abbott government to hold a royal commission into misconduct in the financial services industry when it was moved by the Greens in June, 2015.
While Senator Dastyari was voting against the proposal, Senator Williams was crossing the floor to support the motion. Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson put forward the motion following explosive allegations that senior staff at major financial services company IOOF had engaged in insider trading, frontrunning, misrepresentation of fund performance figures and cheating on training and compliance exams.
His claims followed years of alleged scandals involving the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division, National Australia Bank, Macquarie Private Wealth and IOOF, which managed more than $150 billion of customer money and has 650,000 clients. The motion was defeated 39-14 after Labor sided with the government.
Erasing facts from the historical record has a long history in totalitarian society with Russia and China leading the world in airbrushing the faces of those unfortunate enough to fall foul of their horrendous systems from photographs.
Crediting others with heroic feats they actually didn’t achieve is another. Every revolution needs its heroes and martyrs. But Senator Dastyari doesn’t deserve to be mythologised. His fall came because he put his own and his party’s interests before the interests of Australia.
He took money from wealthy donors, some Chinese, others not, for the party.
The well-deserved criticism comes from the fact that he was patently prepared to take money to meet his personal debts from a Chinese sponsor and that he was also prepared to read a script supporting China’s national interest even when it went against Australia’s national interest and was at odds with the official Labor Party line.
He was a classic sellout and it’s not racist to say so.
Australia treads a delicate diplomatic path with its largest trading partner but it is not blind to China’s increasingly belligerent posture in the South China Sea with its aggressive expansion and militarisation of bases it has built on disputed islands.
China has chosen to insert itself in our political life and cannot now complain that it has been caught Red-handed.
Senator Dastyari, as glib as he was, as talented he may have been within the NSW Right, didn’t understand that the national interest must be placed first and foremost before all other interests when he took his seat in the Senate.
He didn’t even acknowledge the national interest when he announced his intention to resign.
“Today, after much reflection, I’ve decided that the best service I can render to the federal parliamentary Labor Party is to not return to the Senate in 2018,” he told reporters at a media conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
“I’ve been guided by my Labor values, which tell me that I should leave if my ongoing presence detracts from the pursuit of Labor’s mission.”
Aspiring politicians who fantasise upon careers built upon their knowledge of television dramas should contemplate the disgraced senator’s fate and consider whether they truly wish to serve the public or merely wish to indulge in Dastyari-style self-service.