PM asks ‘Is the Labor party’s foreign policy for sale?’ as Bronwyn Bishop joins attack on senator who asked a China-linked company to cover his travel budget

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Malcolm Turnbull has scaled up his attack on Labor senator Sam Dastyari, describing the senator’s expenses scandal as a “cash for comment” moment that must be explained by Labor.

The former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop has also rounded on Dastyari, calling for the senator to be sacked and saying the political left and right must be treated similarly in Australia.

Turnbull said on Friday that Dastyari was clearly wrong to ask a China-linked company to pay a debt of his, but then his subsequent public statements about the South China Sea, which put him at odds with the Australian government’s and Labor’s foreign policy position regarding China, were “extraordinary”.

“This is almost unprecedented,” Turnbull said on Friday. “He has to explain, is the Labor party’s foreign policy for sale? Was this cash for comment?”

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Dastyari is under fire for asking a private company, the Top Education Institute, to cover a travel budget bill worth $1,670.82, incurred by his office.

The company is a private education provider, run by businessman Minshen Zhu, with links to the Chinese government.

The Coalition has increased its attacks on Dastyari following reports he pledged to respect China’s position on the South China Sea at an election campaign press conference for the Chinese community in June.

The government has been under intense pressure since Thursday evening when it lost votes on the floor of the House of Representatives after Labor moved to bring a motion calling for a banking royal commission.

The government was caught flat-footed by the move, and Turnbull has since excoriated the three Coalition ministers who left his government vulnerable by leaving the chamber early.

Bronwyn Bishop castigated Dastyari on Friday, along with the response of the left to the revelations of his behaviour.

“We have one rule for those on the left, and a different rule for those on the right,” Bishop told Sky News on Friday.



“Senator Dastyari should be sacked from his position ... this a scandal, but in the parlance when it’s the left it’s just a mistake, so you can apologise and that’ll be fine, but it’s never enough on the right.

“It’s time we have the same standards applied to the left as applies to the right.”

Bishop was forced to tender her resignation as Speaker of the House of Representatives in August last year after it was revealed she had used taxpayer dollars to charter a $5,227.27 helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong so she could attend a Liberal party fundraiser in November 2014.

It took her weeks to apologise for the act.

She dug in her heels on the use of public money to attend the weddings of two colleagues, Sophie Mirabella and Teresa Gambaro, insisting they were “within the guidelines”, but offered to repay the money because she acknowledged it was not “a good look”.

On Friday, Turnbull said the joint standing committee on electoral matters would soon review “the whole question” of campaign finance in Australia, as it does after every election, but he hinted at areas for reform that he may want to consider.

“There are powerful arguments, for example, to say that donations to political parties should only be made by Australians on the electoral roll,” he said.

“So you would eliminate companies, you’d eliminate unions. The difficulty you face is however – and you’d eliminate foreigners obviously – the difficulty you face though, is that increasingly political campaigns are not being waged by political parties, but by unions, by groups like GetUp.

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“So if you limit donations to political parties, but leave third parties, you know, it could be a corporation, it could be a corporate association, it could be a union, to spend then the system is even less balanced than it is now,” he said.

But he stressed that questions about campaign finance were obviously different from the issue of Dastyari taking money from a China-linked company to pay off his own debts.

“This is a man that has lambasted banks, lambasted businesses, tried to be the great champion of freedom and honesty and openness and condemned corruption everywhere ... [and got] $1,600 from a Chinese donor which, as you’ve said, has associations and connections with the Chinese government,” Turnbull said.

“Then at the same time as this was going on, he took a completely different approach to the South China Sea issue, both to the Australian government and the opposition, and said that he supported China’s claims in the South China Sea and that Australia should support it.”