Extract from The Guardian
Sam Dastyari has a talent for vanishing. He can materialise, and then
disappear, sometimes in the blink of an eye – one of his party tricks.
At 5.45pm on Wednesday, it was time to vanish and he resigned from the frontbench. The word inside Labor is that there was more uncomfortable material to come, and second-chance Sam was already on his last warning.
So bye-bye Sam – suddenly less second chance than surplus to requirements.
Stories like this tend to follow a predictable arc. An imbroglio breaks, deepens, starts cartwheeling across the landscape. When the cartwheeling gets out of control the protagonist falls on his or her sword.
The ritualised humiliation, then exit, is meant to stop the blood-letting. It’s like a full stop applied emphatically at the end of a florid sentence.
But in this instance, two really important conversations have begun in Australia this week, and we need both of them to continue for the health of the democracy.
We need to focus more on soft power forays by interests connected with the Chinese government, not because there’s anything necessarily wrong, but because the activity warrants acuity, and scrutiny. And we need to make Dastyari’s departure a catalyst for significant reform of the donations and disclosure regime.
For once, the high-octane events of Wednesday evening need to be less about media management, and more about the public interest. We cannot allow a set of circumstances where the resignation of a bone-headed Labor senator becomes the end of the conversation.
Because the can of worms the good senator has opened up takes us to the heart of whether or not our parliament works in the interests of the citizens it is supposed to serve.
We all have a stake in that discussion. It’s not an arcane abstraction, it’s a pressing point of concern.
So yes, Dastyari is very foolish. Yes, Bill Shorten held on to him not because he’s a young pup in need of training by wiser heads (which was the too-clever-by-half construction the Labor leader put on it on Tuesday) but because he’s a significant institutional figure, and moving him on would be no small thing.
Moving him on would have stirred up the internal power balances between Victoria and New South Wales, and that’s a fight Bill Shorten didn’t want to have. Not if he could help it.
Of course I can do the theatre criticism. Dastyari should have known better. Shorten should have acted more decisively.
But it’s not the most important take-home point about the events of this past week.
I’ve said it several times, and I’ll say it again.
We need to fix the system of donations and disclosure. We need a serious conversation about institutional politics chasing institutional money. We need a refashioned system that helps our parliamentarians understand very clearly where to draw lines.
And we need it now.
At 5.45pm on Wednesday, it was time to vanish and he resigned from the frontbench. The word inside Labor is that there was more uncomfortable material to come, and second-chance Sam was already on his last warning.
So bye-bye Sam – suddenly less second chance than surplus to requirements.
Stories like this tend to follow a predictable arc. An imbroglio breaks, deepens, starts cartwheeling across the landscape. When the cartwheeling gets out of control the protagonist falls on his or her sword.
The ritualised humiliation, then exit, is meant to stop the blood-letting. It’s like a full stop applied emphatically at the end of a florid sentence.
But in this instance, two really important conversations have begun in Australia this week, and we need both of them to continue for the health of the democracy.
We need to focus more on soft power forays by interests connected with the Chinese government, not because there’s anything necessarily wrong, but because the activity warrants acuity, and scrutiny. And we need to make Dastyari’s departure a catalyst for significant reform of the donations and disclosure regime.
For once, the high-octane events of Wednesday evening need to be less about media management, and more about the public interest. We cannot allow a set of circumstances where the resignation of a bone-headed Labor senator becomes the end of the conversation.
Because the can of worms the good senator has opened up takes us to the heart of whether or not our parliament works in the interests of the citizens it is supposed to serve.
We all have a stake in that discussion. It’s not an arcane abstraction, it’s a pressing point of concern.
So yes, Dastyari is very foolish. Yes, Bill Shorten held on to him not because he’s a young pup in need of training by wiser heads (which was the too-clever-by-half construction the Labor leader put on it on Tuesday) but because he’s a significant institutional figure, and moving him on would be no small thing.
Moving him on would have stirred up the internal power balances between Victoria and New South Wales, and that’s a fight Bill Shorten didn’t want to have. Not if he could help it.
Of course I can do the theatre criticism. Dastyari should have known better. Shorten should have acted more decisively.
But it’s not the most important take-home point about the events of this past week.
I’ve said it several times, and I’ll say it again.
We need to fix the system of donations and disclosure. We need a serious conversation about institutional politics chasing institutional money. We need a refashioned system that helps our parliamentarians understand very clearly where to draw lines.
And we need it now.
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