ICAC: Sam Dastyari reveals the advice he gave to Kaila Murnain

The former Labor senator says he told Kaila Murnain to go to the party’s lawyers over ‘improper’ donations.

Former Federal Labor Senator Sam Dastyari arrives at the Independent Commission Against Corruption today. Picture: AAP

Former Labor senator Sam Dastyari today confirmed he met Kaila Murnain in September 2016, but has contradicted some of the testimony the suspended NSW Labor boss gave in ICAC evidence yesterday.

Read more: Kaila Murnain breaks down giving evidence to corruption inquiry

Called to give evidence today, Mr Dastyari said they met in Sydney shortly after Ms Murnain had received disturbing news from NSW Labor MP Ernest Wong outside NSW Parliament House about allegedly “improper” donations involving property developer Huang Xiangmo.

Mr Dastyari said Ms Murnain told him she had learned from Mr Wong that party fundraising accounts were most likely “inaccurate” in relation to “improper” donations at a Chinese Friends of Labor fundraising event the previous year. He said she also raised Mr Huang’s name.

The evidence from Mr Dastyari, who said he was a confidante of Ms Murnain’s at the time, largely supported the now-suspended NSW party boss’s account that she was very upset after Mr Wong had just told her about possibly illegal party donations.

Mr Dastyari also agreed in evidence, as Ms Murnain claimed yesterday, that his advice to her when they met was that she should go to the NSW Labor Party’s lawyer about the matter to “cover your a***”.

But a number of contradictions emerged during the former Labor senator’s evidence when the ICAC revealed a sequence of text messages and phone calls that showed Ms Murnain met Mr Dastyari shortly after she had seen Holding Redlich partner Ian Robertson about the donation irregularities — and not before as Ms Murnain claimed yesterday.

It also appears that, according to Mr Dastyari’s evidence, Ms Murnain did not tell him she had already seen Mr Robertson.

Former Labor Senator Sam Dastyari rides in by bicycle to give evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearing in Sydney. Picture: AAP

According to Mr Dastyari’s evidence, it appears Ms Murnain also did not tell Mr Dastyari when they met that Mr Robertson had allegedly told her, as she claimed in the ICAC yesterday, to “forget all about” Mr Wong’s claims on possibly illegal donations.

Mr Dastyari, who held Ms Murnain’s position as NSW party secretary before he took a senate seat, said today that he and Ms Murnain were originally expected to have dinner together on September 16, 2016.

But he said she called him late in the day in a “distressed” state, instead wanting to meet him urgently in his car.

He said they talked for up to 90 minutes, while he drove around city streets, about the NSW ALP accounts problems raised by Mr Wong related to the 2015 fundraiser.

“I advised her to go and see lawyers,” Mr Dastyari said.