On Sam Dastyari

James Burke writes: Re. “How and why did Sam Dastyari get here? The answer we don’t have” (yesterday). Yes, it’s curtains for Sam Dastyari. The tragedy is that for the past three years, he was as good as Labor got. He had a go. The rest of them wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

Sure, he made his mark attacking banks, a populist position even pawns of the banks frequently adopt. Along with every other Labor MP, he pulled his punches and bit his lip over the Coalition’s increasingly overt flirtation with fascist conspiracy theories and climate treason. But at least he didn’t hide behind the pretence that MPs are elected to hang out in their electorates greasing squeaky wheels. (“Sorry, I haven’t read up on the war in Syria, I was busy helping Mrs Mangel with her neighbour’s fence. Look, she wrote me this lovely thankyou letter!”)

OK, he’s a Senator, not a local member, but other Senators have been all but absent recently. When Doug Cameron commented on the Dastyari Affair my reaction was: wow, is Doug Cameron still in the Senate?

One of Labor’s last remaining attack dogs just bit off his own front legs in an act of venal idiocy, confirming his NSW Right pedigree. Maybe veterans of the last Labor government are finally getting an inkling of what the Greens were on about, with their much-maligned “purity”.