Last week in one of my random notes, this time concerning Sam Dastyari and the nature and character of his relationship with his Chinese patrons. Seems that I was right in my assessment.
First my note. Below that the front page of today’s SMH.
“..Like many people and political junkies, I have been wracking my brain over the last week trying to understand and get my head around the type of relaxed and comfortable relationship Sam Dastyari must have had with his Chinese patrons… that he could just flick pass his travel bill for payment.
Then it hit me and it’s not complicated at all but rather more prosaic and mundane.
While we’re looking for the intrigueing and complicated stuff the answer to the nature of the relationship was starring us in the face all along.
It was just a case of business as usual. It was and is the standard modis operandi the business as usual, operating model and procedure that’s been refined and practiced by ALP Susssex Street headquarters in NSW of which Dastyari was General Secretary and the union movement under the tutelage of Bill Shorten and other luminaries and as outlined and revealed at the Union Royal Commission over decades..”
Today’s SMH
Why? Dastyari opens up.
“…Dastyari offered no explanation in the tumultuous days leading up to his resignation from Labor’s frontbench last week. But when we spoke on the evening he quit, he was at last willing to shed a little light on the events that had led to his downfall. It seemed it boiled down to habit. “Back in my days at the party office, when you overspent on a campaign, you raised that money from donors and then you declared it,” he said. Basically, in Canberra he had followed procedure that had been standard at NSW Labor’s headquarters in Sussex Street, Sydney. A bill to pay? Find a party donor to cover it. “What I didn’t do,” he said, “was stop and think about the perception and consequences of running my office like that…”