Sam Dastyari left us with one halal of a crater

Sam Dastyari announces his resignation today. Picture: AAP.

The problem with a meteoric rise is that eventually nature remembers which way meteorites travel. And so gravity reasserted its surly bonds around Sam Dastyari and left us with, if we may honour the language of the man himself, one halal of a crater.

“Today, after much reflection,” he began, easing the pin out of his career, “I have decided that the best service I can render to the federal parliamentary Labor Party is to not return to the Senate in 2018.”

There wasn’t so much as a flicker of the chipperness that has accompanied previous efforts, times when he could still see redemption ahead.

Not this time. The great pall of China finally closed over an engaging, intelligent, energetic man, a man possessed with Parliament’s most distinctive giggle and a near freakish ability to appear delighted to see everyone. And as it turned out, a somewhat less freakish deficit of judgment.

As Dasher solemnly went through the motions, Bill Shorten issued one of those press releases that felt like a cipher, every word an innocuous code for something altogether darker and more terrible.

“Following our discussions, Sam Dastyari informed me this morning that he was resigning from the Senate,” it began, then immediately followed this curt understatement with another: “I told him I thought this was the right decision.”

Memories came flooding back of Dasher’s press conference last year, an apology turned evisceration during which he alluded gently to the bollocking Shorten had administered. It would later be revealed the blast from Shorten was so powerful it could have turned tides and bent DNA. And yet Dasher kept it simple that day, elegantly leaving the second “very” to do the heavy lifting: “I’ve been very, very strongly counselled by Bill Shorten.”

Unlike that press conference, though, when the back end of NSW Parliament House provided a backdrop like a reject from a Death Star design competition, Dasher did allow himself the dignity of more aesthetically pleasing surrounds for his departure yesterday: a wall of soothing blue and a solitary Australian flag, the bright white of its Commonwealth star perfectly positioned by his head and shoulder to lend the impression of a halo tumbling to the floor. Or indeed just one falling star next to another.

“I said earlier in the statement that I am a patriotic Australian,” he said as the end drew nigh. “I meant that with all my heart and I leave the Senate with nothing but good thoughts for our country and for our people.”

And with that, the faithful family labrador was handed the shotgun and left to usher himself up to the back paddock to make one last mess for old times’ sake.