Labor senator Sam Dastyari has warned there is something "fundamentally wrong and rotten" with Australia's entire political system, claiming there are 10 huge companies with so much power and influence they have killed proper democratic process at the federal level in this country.

In a firebrand speech in Canberra this week, delivered with the enthusiasm of someone with their eye on the party leadership, Mr Dastyari told a Politics in the Pub audience that he thought he understood power before coming to Canberra as a senator.

But his time in Parliament House has opened his eyes to the realities of the political-business nexus in Australia in a way he could not have anticipated.

"You will not find somebody who came more from the ALP machine than me," Mr Dastyari told the audience, in a recording obtained by Fairfax Media.