The embattled Labor senator, only recently rehabilitated after a long-running controversy last year surrounding a big-time Chinese donor paying his legal bills, this week found himself embroiled in almost the exact same scandal.

The same Chinese donor, Huang Xiangmo, had allegedly been tipped off by Senator Dastyari to the possibility his phone was bugged by intelligence agencies chasing the growth in influence of Chinese-government connected locals.

It is no secret the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has long held concerns about the amount of Chinese funding handed to political parties and that it has briefed party leaders and officials on these fears.

And it is easy to see why – the expansion of China’s influence amongst politicians is difficult to quantify and even harder to combat.

Andrew Shearer, a former national security advisor for Tony Abbott and John Howard, tells Saturday Extra he had been concerned “for a number of years that the Chinese government is mounting a concerted, pervasive and long-term campaign to influence Australian politics”.

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“Australia’s not alone here, of course: similar activities have been exposed in New Zealand, in other countries across the region, in Europe and in the United States,” Shearer, now a senior advisor at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says.

The Turnbull government is also concerned, with Attorney General George Brandis announcing just last month he was finalising new laws to ban foreign donations made by country’s trying to influence politics in Australia.

ASIO, Senator Brandis told the Senate, “has advised that foreign intelligence activity against Australia continues to occur on an unprecedented scale”.

Shearer says while it is good that the government is banning foreign political donations, we “shouldn’t be under any illusions: it will be relatively easy for a determined and well-resourced foreign power to work around those measures – for example, by channelling donations through Australian citizens rather than foreign nationals”.

Now Labor found itself accused of passing information from its leadership to Senator Dastyari, a key factional player, and from him to Huang, a Chinese “whale” as major donors are known within party circles.

Huang is a former senior official of the Chinese government-aligned Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunifi­cation of China.

More damning was the emergence this week of recordings of Senator Dastyari’s comments where he pointedly opposed Labor’s recently announced position on the South China Sea, a sensitive dispute in which China claims territories also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

That was seized on by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, sorely in need of a victory after a major backflip on the royal commission into the banks, to all but accuse Senator Dastyari of treason.

“There is espionage from many countries and I just want to, let’s just focus on the real issue at the moment which is Sam Dastyari – this is a guy, and he was, he received money in return for changing policy from a Chinese national, Mr Huang who has very close links to the Chinese government,” Turnbull said yesterday.

It has also not been lost on many Labor officials the irony of Turnbull attacking the closeness of Senator Dastyari and the Chinese government when several current and former Liberal MPs have shown less than adequate discretion when it comes to that relationship.

Most notoriously, former trade minister Andrew Robb took a $880,000 a year job with another billionaire with close tied to the Chinese Communist Party one day before the last federal election.

And even Huang, the man who this week again landed Senator Dastyari in hot water, has strong tied to the Liberal Party, and particularly the party’s West Australian branch, to which he donated $280,000 in one year alone despite having no investments in the state.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, a West Australian, reported singled Huang out for praise during the launch of the Australia China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, which he funded and which employs former foreign minister Bob Carr.

Carr, another major NSW Labor figure, was overseas and unable to comment, but in July said his think tank was no longer funded by Huang, who resigned as chairman of the institute.

“This would clear the way for a new generation of Chinese-background Australians to establish an umbrella organisation comparable to that of other migrant communities but with no constitutional ties to any government organisation or party in China,” she says.

Carr had “repeatedly called on China to demonstrate restraint rather than assertiveness in the South China Sea,” she says.

But between Chau Chak Wing and Huang, political parties have benefited from donations of more than $1.5 million in just one year, creating a situation where it is political opportune to divorce themselves of Chinese donors but financially calamitous.

But the creation of a Home Office, to better coordinate a security response to any insidious influence being pushed by major foreign donors, will help.

And, Shearer says, the media’s continued focus on Chinese donations and the subsequent influence on what parliamentarians say on important issues particularly related to the South China Sea and other contentious areas like Taiwan, is “the best disinfectant”.

“One of the healthiest things that has happened is that these malign attempts to manipulate Australian democracy have started to be exposed by the media and brought to the Australian public’s attention,” he says.

Labor was hoping the furore would pass in a day. It hasn’t.