Senator Sam Dastyari says he made a mistake - 22 times. Credit:Wolter Peeters Young Sam may have been stung, but he was apparently so relieved that Shorten had also announced he had decided to give him a second chance and not axe him from his frontbench that he submitted himself to a press conference. Dastyari would have been better off sitting in a darkened room, the drapes drawn, reflecting silently on the grand days when he was a somebody who wasn't in peril. Like when, having endured countless Chinese meals with the hard men of the NSW Right, he had gained, at age 27, one of the most powerful positions in the ALP: NSW secretary-general of the party. It was a position previously held by operators like Graham "Richo" Richardson, Stephen Loosley, John Della Bosca, Eric Roozendal, Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar. Or the shining moment when 100 members of the NSW Right, a sort of a political gangster cult, gathered at Sydney's Sussex Street headquarters and endorsed Dastyari unanimously for the Senate - a seat he took in 2013, followed by happy promotions up Shorten's shadow ministry.

Senator Sam Dastyari was energetic during his Tuesday press conference. Credit:Wolter Peeters Alas. All in the past. Dastyari's "I'm an honest man" press conference started low and headed downhill. He sought to present himself as a naive fellow who had worked out - on reflection, of course - that he had done the wrong thing by having asked a chap linked to the Chinese Government to pay the $1670 his own parliamentary office had overspent on travel. But why did he ask this Chinese fellow to pay an Australian parliamentary bill in the first place?

"Firstly, it was an office travel overspend," said Dastyari, explaining nothing, as he would continue to do for the entire remainder of his agonisingly long inquisition. "I should have paid it myself. I didn't. I regret that and I'm not here to kind of justify or make excuses for it. I'm here to say I was in the wrong." Yes, but why? "I'm someone who is probably got a bias towards action and I'm a kind of driven, 100-miles-an-hour type of person. I think the lesson for me out of all this is to learn that perhaps reflect more and . . . look, it's been a learning experience." So, umm, why, subsequently, did he make statements about the South China Sea that were in accord with China's view and against the Labor Party's policy? Was it payback? Cash for comment?

"I support the Labor Party position on the issue of the South China Sea," said Dastyari. "Now I don't - look, I am not aware of that [his support for China's position] being my exact words but I want to be very clear, if there is an instance where I have misspoken, I was wrong. The Labor Party position on this is very clear." Just to be even clearer, the previously misspoken Dastyari repeated 10 times in four minutes that "I support the Labor Party position on the issue of the South China Sea." He still offered no reason for asking for money, or why a Chinese gentleman would hand it over without asking or expecting any return on his investment. Finally, someone got around to asking the senator the most obvious question: whether his position was tenable.

"Of course," he responded. "I have been here for 25 minutes, we are going around in circles. I have answered question after question. Thank you so much." Loading In the space of those minutes, the former 100-miles-an-hour star speedster known as Sam Dastyari had diminished to an actual nobody. Shorten would be kind to put him out of his misery.