'You think you're using them, but they're using you': Dastyari on donors, deceit and depression

He's been the pin-up model for foreign interference in Australian politics for two years, after being forced out of office at the age of 34 amid a spiralling Chinese influence scandal.

"It worries me when you use race as a shield from legitimate questions," he says. "What's that Hunter S. Thompson quote? Buy the ticket, take the ride. If you get in the ring, you're going to get punched."Dastyari now concedes Huang Xiangmo, the billionaire donor and property developer he once courted and warned about ASIO surveillance, was probably an "agent of influence" for Beijing.

The fallen hot-shot may be out of the ring but he clearly wants to stay in the circus. When called to give evidence to the ICAC in late August, he arrived on a green share bike, sparking headlines which he played up on social media. He suggests posing on a bike for this story.On the stand, Dastyari told the ICAC how he had counselled the now-suspended NSW Labor secretary Kaila Murnain in 2016 about an allegedly "improper" $100,000 donation from Mr Huang the previous year.

"She was miserably unhappy with the pressure," Dastyari says. "It was clearly getting to her. I thought she had lost her passion and my advice to her at the time was: you don't need to do this with your life." Murnain told the ICAC she was "no longer a very close friend of Sam's". They hadn't spoken frequently since the state election and she "stopped engaging" with him when he joined the throng of Labor figures pressuring her to resign. It was a "very strong point of difference"., Dastyari titled a chapter "Murnain: The one to watch" and another "Bill Shorten: The one who will be king".

Dastyari jokes that he's "the only person taken out of depression by Kyle Sandilands, not placed in it by him", and the pair are now close friends. Dastyari says he admires how Sandilands doesn't care about the criticism and hatred directed his way.

CorruptNSW samDastyari says that “in hindsight, rich donors always have an agenda of their own”. We are all wiser with hindsight Sam, but most people I know would have picked up on this a little earlier in life.

And you are one of the educated and informed members of society. What chance for the unengaged?

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