Sam Dastyari was being tight when he ducked travel bill, friend says

Those close to Sam Dastyari say he was just being a “tight-arse” by asking a Chinese company to pay $1670 travel bill.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari in Sydney’s Surry Hills. Picture: John Feder.

Those close to Sam Dastyari say he was just being a “tight-arse” by asking a state-linked Chinese company to pay a $1670 travel bill, as the Labor senator pushes for a ban on political donations a year after the scandal nearly ended his career.

On the ABC’s Australian Story on Monday night, Senator Dastyari reflected on the event which forced him to resign as manager of opposition business in the Senate last September.

“I had a $1670 travel overspend from my staff and I was travelling outside too much of our budget,” he said.

“I handled that in the way I would have handled it if I was still the party secretary of New South Wales if it was a campaign bill. It wasn’t a campaign bill, it was an office over expense. So what I did, was I contacted a donor, I asked them to donate, they did.”

Senator Dastyari’s friend Sam Crosby said he had tried to make light of the situation and brush it off, but in the end couldn’t escape the public scrutiny after a series of critical media reports acted as “death by a thousand cuts”.

“People just couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t have paid this bill. I think the answer is he was being a tight-arse,” he said.

In a stunning about-face, @samdastyari calls for total ban on political donations https://t.co/ogIXRVSz4z #AustralianStory TONIGHT pic.twitter.com/R4FvIMhOhF

— Australian Story (@AustralianStory) July 31, 2017

Former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, who hired a 26-year-old Senator Dastyari to be the general secretary of the NSW Labor Party, said he had told her at the time he had involved the Chinese Communist Party-linked company because he “didn’t want to pay the bill”.

“I said, ‘Well, don’t say that, you’ll be ever known as the guy who didn’t want to pay his bill,’ but he goes: ‘It’s the truth’,” he said.

Senator Dastyari called for an immediate end to political donations, a move which was dismissed today by opposition leader Bill Shorten.

But the Senator denied his calls for donation reform were hypocritical or self-serving.

“I’m not purporting that I’m coming at this issue as some kind of you know purist. I’m a realist on this and saying, you know, this needs to change. That we have to reform.”

“I come at this from someone who wasn’t just part of the arms race, I was one of the weapon suppliers in this arms race,” he said. “I was the party secretary of the largest branch of one of the largest parties in the country, and responsible for fundraising, you know, across the party. And I’m telling you it needs to come to an end, and the time for that is now.”

.@samdastyari opens up the family album to share his life growing up as an #Iranian migrant in Australia TONIGHT #AustralianStory #throwback pic.twitter.com/xxC5OVgkMi

— Australian Story (@AustralianStory) July 31, 2017

Other federal politicians told the program the Senator’s call to ban donations wouldn’t instigate change.

“In Canberra, words are worthless,” said independent MP Andrew Wilkie. “The Labor Party is too conflicted. It’s not about to turn that, that tap off, even though it should.”

Opposition leader Bill Shorten said the decision to get the Chinese company to pay the bill had been “incredibly naive”.

“Bill Shorten ripped me a new one,” Senator Dastyari told the ABC. “Bill said Sam, you are a bruiser in politics, you play hard, you play tough, and you should know better.”

The program also explored Senator Dastyari’s personal life and upbringing, with the show following him and his sister as they travelled back to the house in Iran where they lived for several years before his family immigrated to Australia.

His parents Naser and Ella were student activists at university during the 1979 Iranian revolution and moved with their two children to Australia in 1988.

An interest in the Republican Referendum sparked @samdastyari ‘s interest in politics and he soon became “obsessed” #auspol @AustralianLabor pic.twitter.com/yrygXoFi0s

— Australian Story (@AustralianStory) July 31, 2017

Senator Dastyari said he changed his name from Sahand to Sam in order to fit in as a child in Australia.

“I’ve always felt like an outsider. I mean changed my own name to fit in. I mean what more sign of desperate desire to fit in can there be than someone who comes here and says, you know I don’t want to be Sahand anymore I want to be Sam, because I don’t want to be different.”

He joined the Labor Party aged 16, and became head of Young Labor when he was 22.

“I’ve never shied away from the fact that if you want to get attention for what you believe in, you have to be prepared to put on a show,” he said. “I’ve always been able to put on a show. Sometimes to my own detriment.”

Senator Dastyari was described by colleagues as a charismatic and a “force of nature”.

“I think a bit of that American style self-publicising Senator using the committee system to do a worthwhile public duty but at the same time to publicise himself. The two go together,” said former NSW Premier Bob Carr.

Graham Richardson, a mentor to Senator Dastyari, said he was “fearless”, while Nick Xenophon described him as a “force of nature ... almost a cyclonic force at times”.