Sam Dastyari resigns: Peta Credlin says Bill Shorten behind his exit

Bill Shorten had his hands “all over” the resignation of Sam Dastyari from the frontbench, Peta Credlin says.

Peta Credlin says Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was “instrumental” in the removal of Senator Sam Dastyari, who resigned from the frontbench over payments from Chinese businesses.

Ms Credlin said there was little doubt that the rising Labor star had been tapped by Mr Shorten after a week of mounting pressure from the government over the $1670 payment.

“The public face may have been that Sam chose to resign, but that is all a lot of machinations and a lot of presentation so that he can come back, should he come back somewhere down the track,” Ms Credlin told Sky News Australia.

“(Senator Dastyari) is certainly widely respected on the Labor side and certainly widely acknowledged, if not respected, on the Coalition side of politics as being a pretty effective weapon for the Labor Party.”

The former chief of staff to Tony Abbott likened Senator Dastyari’s move to that of Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos, who resigned as Assistant Treasurer in 2014 amid an ICAC investigation.

Ms Credlin said she expected Senator Dastyari to eventually return to a prominent Labor Party role.

Sky News pundit Peta Credlin.

“Unless something other comes out in the public domain, he will be back,” She said. “He will be back in a serious frontbench role, and not dissimilar to Arthur Sinodinos, who chose to step down in order that it wasn’t the leader punishing them.

“Because then you require the leader to change their mind tio bring them back - (which is) always difficult to do. If you stand down it’s much easier to be rehabilitated, so that’s the course that was taken.

“But if anyone thinks that Bill Shorten didn’t have his hands all over this - let me tell you that the phone call tree and the meetings would have been happening at a fierce tempo.”

Shorten: Sam will come back

Mr Shorten says Senator Dastyari will make a comeback following his resignation from Labor’s frontbench.

The Opposition Leader said Senator Dastyari had made a mistake and paid a heavy price in stepping down yesterday.

“I don’t think this is the end of Senator Dastyari’s career.” Mr Shorten said.

“He’s a bright young bloke with a lot of passion, a lot of ideas to offer Australia, and I’m sure that in the future he will come back.”

Mr Shorten said spoken with Senator Dastyari several times following his press conference on the donations scandal on Tuesday afternoon.

“Over the course of yesterday we had a series of hard conversations,” he told reporters after an address at the McKellar Institute.

“I’m not here to go into every detail and every blow by blow, I’m not here to put the salt into any wounds, but at the conclusion of those conversations Senator Dastyari offered his resignation.

“He admits he did the wrong thing. He’s going to take a step back. He doesn’t want to distract from the opposition’s proposals, analysing the government and offering a positive platform of our own, and so he’s taken this decision, he’s paid a price and I acknowledge that, and I certainly think that he’s a bright young person with plenty to offer in the future and we’ll hear more from him.”

Asked whether Senator Dastyari was avoiding public critique after pulling out of several public engagements in recent days, Mr Shorten said he didn’t believe Senator Dastyari thought he was avoiding the public.

“If you have any fear about seeing the last of Sam Dastyari, you watch, he’ll be around,” Mr Shorten said.

The Opposition Leader said Senator Dastyari’s resignation cleared the way for reform of foreign donations, and called on Malcolm Turnbull to join him in banning them, as 114 countries around the world have done.

“Labor has previously tried to engage in political donation reform and at the last election we said we thought it was overdue to have reform in terms of foreign donations,” Mr Shorten said.

“I say to Mr Turnbull, be prepared next week, you can either work with us or oppose us, but by hook or by crook Labor’s going to propose legislation which will ban foreign donations.”

Mr Shorten said Labor would also campaign to end anonymity for any donation over $1000.

“Currently the law has crept up to $13200 across each state division of a political party, so it allows currently people to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to their political party and the Australian voter can be none the wiser who has paid,” he said.

“I also think that we should have donation declaration in real time.”

Mr Shorten acknowledged there was support for donation reform among some Liberal MPs, as well as the Greens and Labor.

“So I say to Mr Turnbull, Senator Dastyari’s stepped down now, so now we can focus on the bigger picture of donation reform.”

“I didn’t want to pay bill”

Disgraced former Labor frontbencher Sam Dastyari says he asked a Chinese business to pay his bill because he “didn’t want to pay it” and that, frankly, “not a lot” was going through his mind when he made the decision.

Speaking to a Nine Network reporter outside his Sydney home this morning, Senator Dastyari would not say whether or not he was pushed to resign yesterday.

“The fact is that this had gone on for too long, and while Bill Shorten and others had been incredibly supportive and they’ve given complete support throughout this process, it became unfair for me to become a distraction for the Labor Party,” he said.

Asked why he still hadn’t answered questions about how he came to ask the Chinese-linked Top Education Institute to pay a $1670 office travel bill, Senator Dastyari claimed he had addressed the issue.

“All these matters have been kind of answered and I think have been canvassed quite extensively,” he said.

“The reality is, that I made a mistake, and the mistake that I made was getting a private company to pay a bill that I did not want to pay myself.”

Senator Dastyari failed to give a direct answer to the question of why he did not want to pay the bill.

“I asked them to pay it because I didn’t want to pay it, and frankly that was wrong, that’s a mistake, and I’ve got to be really honest with you, I’m paying a price for a mistake,” he said.

“It’s not more complicated than that. I had a bill. I didn’t want to pay the bill. The bill was for $1700 or $1670, I asked a private company to pay that bill for me, I declared that on my pecuniary interests register.”

He said the bill had been for “office travel overspend” which had been incurred when his office travel expenditure was reconciled at the end of the financial year.

The reporter asked Senator Dastyari what had been going through his mind when he decided to ask for the payment.

“Well look frankly I think it’s pretty obvious that not a lot at the time, and I didn’t reflect at the time, I declared it, I put it all on my pecuniary interests register, but that being said, I should have paid the bill myself,” Senator Dastyari said.

He said any decision about a future return to the front bench was a matter for others.

“The reality is I made a mistake, I’m going on the back bench, and I’m paying the price for my mistake.”

“Sam did honourable thing”

Shadow Regional Development Minister Stephen Jones says his senate colleague Sam Dastyari has done the “honourable thing” in resigning after becoming embroiled in scandal over his acceptance of donations from Chinese businesses, while Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has not ruled out a return to the front bench.

The NSW senator and party powerbroker ­offered his resignation yesterday, saying he wanted to end a damaging “distraction” for the ­opposition.

Mr Jones, who comes from the left faction of the NSW Labor Party, while Senator Dastyari hails from the right, said the senator had done the right thing by the party.

“We’re obviously a little bit disappointed for him,” he told ABC radio.

Mr Jones said Senator Dastyari’s energy and work as Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs would be missed.

“He’s taken on the big end of town and I think scored some runs,” he said.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten last night described Senator Dastyari as a “young bloke with a bright future ahead of him” and a lot more to offer Labor and Australia, but Mr Jones declined to weigh in on whether Senator Dastyari would return to the front bench at a future point.

“These are things for Bill and the party and caucus to sort out, but look I think Sam has done the right thing,” Mr Jones said.

“In his own words what has been going on over the last couple of days has been a distraction from the woeful performance of Malcolm Turnbull.

“Labor and all of our supporters want us to be focusing on that, not our own internals.”

Asked whether Senator Dastyari had taken too long to quit, Mr Jones said Labor couldn’t sack a frontbencher every time the government suggested they should.

“If we necked one of our frontbenchers every time Malcolm Turnbull puffed himself up and demanded it, there’d be nobody sitting on the front bench,” he said.

Treasurer Scott Morrison last night said Bill Shorten should have acted sooner.

“Who would have thought that Sam Dastyari had higher expectations than Bill Shorten?” he told 7.30.

“I mean Sam Dastyari has taken this decision today. Bill Shorten was continuing to defend him.”

Mr Jones called for a complete ban on foreign donations.

“I think it’s in line with the expectations of Australian people,” he said.

Dastyari could make a comeback

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the Sam Dastyari matter had now been dealt with and was over, and has not ruled out a return to the front bench for the disgraced senator.

Mr Dreyfus said Senator Dastyari had shown through his conduct as senator taking the attack up to the government and focusing attention on wrongdoing in the finance sector that he has got a lot to offer.

“Whether he can come back to the front bench is a matter for the caucus and the leader at some future time,” Mr Dreyfus told the ABC.

“But while he remains in parliament, we’ve seen people come back before from resigning a front bench position, sitting on the backbench for a time and coming back.

“Of course he has the prospect while he remains in the senate of coming back.”

Mr Dreyfus said the matter of Senator Dastyari’s wrongdoing had been dealt with and was over.

“Sam Dastyari has made it very clear that he made a mistake and he actually made that very clear right from the outset,” Mr Dreyfus said.

“He disclosed the payment in question, which is what’s enabled public examination of this and it’s been dealt with. No one has pointed to me that there was a breach of the rules. He complied with the rules in relation to disclosure. Still less has anyone suggested he broke the law.”

Asked whether the rules around politicians receiving personal gifts from donors needed to change, Mr Dreyfus said no one was suggesting MPs shouldn’t be able to receive gifts at all.

“I think that there’s a range of matters where MPs receive benefits,” he said, citing tickets to the AFL Grand Final as an example, amid news today Cabinet Ministers Julie Bishop and Matthias Cormann charged taxpayers more than $6000 to attend last year’s AFL Grand Final after being given tickets by corporate donors.

“They need to be disclosed and that is an important thing,” Mr Dreyfus said.

He said foreign donations were a different matter which was why Labor and some Coalition backbenchers were calling for a ban.

“It is time for the government to seriously sit down with Labor and work through what those changes should be,” Mr Dreyfus said.

“A starting point should be more transparency. A starting point should be a lower threshold and very importantly, (former prime Minister) John Howard was talking about this yesterday, we need to have more timely disclosure. Real time disclosure should be possible.”

Dastyari cancels on book launch

Sam Dastyari has pulled out of his second event in as many days, cancelling on a book launch scheduled for this evening.

Senator Dastyari resigned as Shadow Consumer Affairs Minister yesterday as a result of controversy surrounding his acceptance of personal payments totalling more than $40,000 from Chinese business entities.

The usually publicity-seeking Senator had been due to address the University of Queenland’s ALP Club last night, but left former Treasurer Wayne Swan to fill the spot at the last minute.

As recently as this morning, press releases were sent out touting Senator Dastyari’s scheduled launch in Sydney this evening of BuzzFeed Political Editor Mark Di Stefano’s diary of the recent election campaign, What A Time to Be Alive.

Organisers this afternoon confirmed Senator Dastyari would not be appearing, and that Queensland frontbencher Terri Butler would launch the book in his absence.

Meanwhile, social media users have paid tribute to Senator Dastyari by posting pictures of halal snack packs.

Senator Dastyari has long championed the kebab, potato chip and three-sauce combination, famously issuing an election night invitation to anti-halal senate colleague Pauline Hanson to try one with him.

The #PutOutYourHSPs hashtag has been trending on Twitter and Instagram, with messages such as “Political positions come and go but snack packs are a gift that keeps on providing”.

The official halal snack pack appreciation society Facebook group has also featured posts referencing the Senator.

“Just wanted to share this photo of the first HSP I had and acknowledge the effort and time Sam Dastyari has put into this group,” one member said, attaching a picture of a snack pack.

Senator Dastyari acknowledged the tributes on Facebook last night with a short post: “Rough day. This is perhaps the best thing that has ever happened in my life (family excluded),” he wrote.

What about Bishop’s donations?

It has been revealed that Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo, who is chair of the Yuhu Group which paid a $40,000 legal bill for Senator Dastyari, also funds the China-Australia Institute which is run by former Labor premier and foreign minister Bob Carr.

The Australian also revealed today that former NSW Labor government Treasurer and predecessor of Senator Dastyari as head of the Labor Party in NSW, Eric Roozendaal, works at Yuhu, referring to himself as the “chief executive”.

Asked whether this indicated the relationship between the Yuhu Group and the Labor Party was too close, Mr Dreyfus said connection did raise “alarm bells”.

“There’s questions about obviously Chinese-linked companies,” he said.

But Mr Dreyfus sought to deflect attention onto Foreign Minister Ms Bishop, raising the issue of more than $500,000 in donations her WA branch of the Liberal Party has received from Chinese companies

“What steps has the Foreign Minister of Australia taken to ensure that there isn’t any conflict of interest there that she’s not being influenced?” Mr Dreyfus asked.

“It’s been pointed out that Julie Bishop accepted an iPad, airfares, accommodation from a Chinese-owned company in addition to these donations.

Pressed on Senator Dastyari’s comments in favour of China’s position on the South China Sea and asked whether it proved he had been influenced, Mr Dreyfus said there was doubt about exactly what the senator had said, but that it was clear he backed Labor policy.

Isn’t Dasher proof soft power working?

“That’s of course part of the mud throwing that we’ve seen from the Prime Minister now in the last few days,” Mr Dreyfus said.

“It’s not entirely clear what it is that he’s said. What is clear is that he backs Labor policy.”

Asked whether Senator Dastyari had explained to Labor leaders why he took the money in the first place, Mr Dreyfus claimed he had answered those questions in a press conference and paid a high price by resigning.

Mr Dreyfus denied that Bill Shorten had continued to defend Senator Dastyari after it was clear his position was untenable.

“That’s (Treasurer) Scott Morrison’s characterisation of defending,” he said.

“Bill Shorten said from the outset that Sam Dastyari did the wrong thing.

“He’s severely admonished him and said that he should have a second chance.

“I don’t think that’s exactly defending Sam Dastyari, that’s saying he did the wrong thing, and for Scott Morrison to be suggesting as he did that there was a defence, or implying that there was a defence of Sam Dastyari is quite wrong.”

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was asked about the WA Liberal branch donations on the sidelines of ministerial meetings in Berlin.

“There is absolutely no correlation between political donations from in some cases Australian-Chinese residents and the circumstances that Sam Dastyari found himself in, touting for a personal payment from another entity,” she told the ABC.

Conroy “unaware” of China relations

Labor Deputy Leader in the Senate Stephen Conroy has denied being aware of the close relationship between the Labor Party and the Yuhu Group, which paid Senator Dastyari’s $40,000 legal bill and where former NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal is deputy chair, and his fellow former NSW ALP boss Jamie Clements previously worked.

“I have no relationship with said individuals or companies. I’m not in a position to comment,” Senator Conroy told the ABC.

He said he was not sure who worked there.

Asked whether he knew the deputy chair, Senator Conroy said he did not believe he had met anyone in that capacity in recent years.

Quizzed further on whether he was aware that Roozendaal was the deputy chair, Senator Conroy said he hadn’t met “Eric” for a long, long time.

“I don’t think I’ve had any contact with him from my memory, since he left parliament,” Senator Conroy said.

“I was aware he worked for a Chinese company. Someone mentioned it to me a few years ago, but in terms of any contact with him, absolutely not.

“I mean it might come as a surprise to you given my strong views in the Defence portfolio and my strong views on issues in the South China Sea that I’m not in regular contact with Chinese companies.”

Senator Conroy said there was a very clear distinction between the Labor Party, which supports a ban on foreign donations, and the Liberal Party, which has voted twice in recent years against reform.

“Transparency in donations is like a wooden stake to a vampire when it comes to the Liberal Party,” he said.

“I think the Australian public would be horrified by the fact that the Liberal Party support foreign companies being able to donate when 118 countries, most Western countries, have banned this practice.

“That’s been our position consistently. We’ve put that to parliament. We’ve attempted to pass that in legislation and we’ve been defeated by the Liberal Party and just before the last election by the Greens.”

“We don’t believe anyone should be accepting foreign donations and they should be banned.”