We need to be very careful about the political narrative emerging to explain Sam Dastyari’s downfall.

In Fairfax, Mark Kenny argues that, by resigning over his connections with billionaire Huang Xiangmo, Dastyari “reinforced to Beijing, and to its wealthy business and political surrogates here, that Australia will safeguard its sovereignty as jealously as does China”.

Sam Dastyari quits as Labor senator over China connections Read more

That’s all very well. But surely it begs the more obvious question: why are politicians hobnobbing with billionaire property developers of any nationality?

In his latest Quarterly Essay, Without America: Australia in the New Asia, Hugh White argues that we’re living through a moment of strategic transition, spurred by the rise of China and the decline of the US.

All of a sudden, America, the dominant imperial power in Asia since the second world war, seems neither willing nor able to defend its pre-eminence.

In recent years, Australian governments have tried to steer carefully between the longstanding alliance with the US and the growing economic ties with booming China.

But that’s not going to be possible for much longer, as China’s new assertiveness conflicts with the priorities of an overcommitted and internally divided America.

White puts it like this:

China’s rise is a fact and isn’t going away. It constitutes a profound shift in the distribution of power in Asia, and is creating a new regional order in which China has a lot more influence, and America has less …

That tension is manifesting itself locally through a kind of shadow politics, with both the Chinese and the Americans seeking to influence politicians, even as different sections of the local capitalist class debate how their specific interests might be best served.

America or China? Australia is fooling itself that it doesn't have to choose Read more

Huang Xiangmo might well have ties with the Chinese Communist party – but we’d be naïve not to recognise Asio, with its links since the cold war to the US military establishment, as itself a player in the ongoing intrigue.



Now, there are good reasons to fear all the strategic options being canvassed in an Asia divided between two nuclear-armed powers. White notes the parallel with Europe in 1914, a grim example of where brinkmanship and diplomatic bluster can lead. Do you trust the guys who launched the Iraq war or do you side with the people responsible for Tiananmen Square?

But let’s take a step back and look at Dastyari’s shenanigans from a different perspective.

“We will not begin to adapt to the new Asia,” says White, “until our political leaders start to explain what is happening and to debate what we should do.”

In 1941, when John Curtin initiated a comparable reorientation of Australian foreign policy (a break from the old British empire and an embrace of the new American one), he did so in a speech published in the Melbourne Herald.

“Without any inhibitions of any kind,” he announced, “I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”

Could you imagine Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten or any other contemporary politician making an address of comparable boldness?

Our parliamentarians could not even resolve marriage equality, embarking on a complicated and protracted process so they could handpass responsibility to the public for a minor democratic reform. Not surprisingly, they’re responding to the growing tensions in the region by pretending that nothing’s changed.

Australia in 2017 differs from Australia in 1941 in all kinds of ways but the comparison between Curtin’s openness and the pusillanimity of today’s politicians exemplifies a political crisis that’s been apparent for some time.

Put bluntly, our leaders can no longer lead.

The ongoing citizenship debacle represents merely the latest installment of the more or less permanent instability that has wrecked every administration since the Rudd era.

There are many facets to this crisis but an obvious aspect of Australia’s new ungovernability pertains to the deep disdain of the public for their representatives.

And that brings us back to Sam Dastyari.

The ABC has revealed that, in 2015, Huang paid $55,000 for the pleasure of lunching with Bill Shorten. Before that, he contributed $50,000 to the Liberal party in Victoria and then donated to Liberal senator Mathias Cormann and former Tasmanian Liberal MP Andrew Nikolic in the 2016 election.

Again, irrespective of Huang’s nationality, what are the effects of these donations – and others like them – on the democratic process? Which local magnates are funding our politicians, and what do they expect in return for their largesse?

In the weeks to come, expect Malcolm Turnbull to make hay about Dastyari’s downfall, using the China card to tar Labor as disloyal and dishonest. But the arguments about national security are, in many ways, a distraction.

Turnbull says Australia will 'stand up' to China as foreign influence row heats up Read more

Yes, we need an open and honest discussion about the strategic tensions mounting in Asia, lest our politicians blunder us into a catastrophic regional conflict.

But Dastyari’s resignation should also spur broader outrage about the influence of big money on both political parties.

In the US, many liberals obsess about the supposed role played by Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election. Yet any serious analysis of Donald Trump must begin with the dysfunction in American society that allowed such an odious figure to assemble a political base.

The same thing might be said here. In an unstable and complex world, it’s dangerous and lazy to blame homegrown problems on Beijing.

• Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist