Dastyari had to go, but China the bigger issue
SAM Dastyari wasn’t the disease, he was merely the symptom of China’s systematic meddling in the affairs of foreign countries, writes James Morrow.
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AND in the end Sam Dastyari, the man whose attraction to a microphone could previously only be described as magnetic, was late to his own political funeral.
Ten minutes after what presumably will be his last press conference was due to begin, “Dasher” Dastyari finally fronted up, shamefaced (not for the first time, that) to pull the pin on one of the briefest, and most bizarre, careers in Australian political history.
By now the history of Dasher’s misdeeds are well-known: The travel bill paid by a Chinese donor.
The speeches taking Beijing’s, and not Australia’s or the ALP’s position, on vital strategic matters including the South China Sea.
The now-infamous alleged warning to Huang Xiangmo that his phone might be tapped by ASIO.
It all stank to high heaven, with each new revelation suggesting a man more concerned with party politics than the interests of his country, and it was well past time for him to go.
Particularly with the whispered suggestions that whatever had hit the press today, well, there would be more tomorrow.
Eventually neither his role as a protector and supporter of the Victorian Bill Shorten among the influential NSW Right of the Labor Party, nor his ability to fill the party’s coffers with donations from ethnic constituencies, was enough to save him.
Nor should they have been.
In the end, though, his departure speech was like the rest of his career. All about him and “the Labor cause” — nothing about Australia’s interests, naturally.
But here’s the thing: Even with Dastyari gone, the problem of foreign — particularly Chinese — influence remains.
And, sorry Kristina Kenneally, there is nothing wrong with pointing out that our near-neighbour, which makes no secret of its global ambitions to own the 21st century, is doing whatever it can to make sure countries like Australia see things its way.
Because while the world frets about Russia’s activities meddling in elections, China has openly undertaken a foreign influence campaign not just in Australia but around the world — so much so that The Economist magazine played with the ancient self-image of China as “the middle country” to instead dub it “the meddle country”.
Premier Xi Jinping has more than once referred to foreign influence campaigns as a “magic weapon” to help give his nation worldwide influence and maintain the Chinese Communist Party in power.
Putting Dastyari to one side, recent months have seen more and more reports of Chinese influence in Australia, from dubious big-money donations (Australian security agencies have already flagged the danger of influence-buying) to think tanks operating as propaganda arms of Beijing (the Australia China Relations Institute at UTS, set up by Huang Xiangmo and headed by Bob Carr, has come under criticism for uncritically pushing Beijing’s agenda) to university professors and academics reporting that they have been silenced for being critical of the Chinese communist regime.
Dastyari, for all his many faults, is not so much the disease, but the symptom.
James Morrow is Opinion Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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