Dastyari: 'Sorry, sorry, sorry...'
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Oh dear. Look it wasn't good. Sam Dastyari tried to do the 'I'll answer all your questions. I'm being completely straight' thing on Tuesday. But it wasn't pretty.
He couldn't say why, exactly, he got a Chinese company to pay a bill for him.
Most significantly, he couldn't actually deny that he might just have, accidentally, told a Chinese media conference that "the South China Sea is China's own affair", and that "on this issue [the South China Sea] Australia should remain neutral and respect China's decision".
That is a pretty devastating set of words to not be able to deny.
I was wrong: Dastyari
The press conference of the Manager of Opposition business in the Senate – who Labor Leader Bill Shorten repeatedly referred to on Tuesday as "a junior senator from NSW" – was supposed to allow him to show his contrition, answer the multiple questions about his financial and political relationships with China, and put the issue to political bed.
But it didn't really do that. In fact, his inability to deny that he might have endorsed the Chinese position of the South China Sea probably made things worse.
Dastyari remains compromised goods. His capacity to attack the government is now extremely limited. He is a factional albatross around his leader's neck.
Bill Shorten had stepped up his apparent criticism of the senator before Dastyari's press conference, saying he had "made an imprudent decision" and "I've spoken to him severely", and "made it crystal clear that this is not the behaviour I expect in the future from him".
However, he said, he was a "bright young man" who had "made his mistake, he knows it and I am prepared however to give him a second chance".
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A range of issues remain unresolved out of this episode.
Dastyari's woes have been as big a wake-up call to MPs on both sides of politics as last Thursday's shenanigans in the House of Representatives were to Coalition MPs.
But the China issue is much more substantial in the world of realpolitik than control over the parliament late on a Thursday afternoon. Chinese soft power is not to be meddled with.
Both sides of politics have accepted money from the Chinese. Dastyari's problems remains that he accepted it, and then was seen to proselytising its position.
So we need a new regime for political donations. The upside of the "Shanghai Sam" affair may be that enough politicians see a self-interest in political donation reform, particularly foreign donations. Not just from China. And addressing all forms of largesse
It is too much hope that we get a new regime of politicians not being dopes?
But the whole episode only increases the legitimacy of calls for a federal corruption regulator.
That's not because Dastyari has necessarily done anything corrupt but because it exposes the limitations of a political discussion which political parties exploit in trying to defend themselves by saying that someone has "not broken the rules" because they have declared donations.