Embattled Labor senator Sam Dastyari has finally admitted why he had a Chinese donor pay a personal debt, the self-described "mistake" which cost him his frontbench job.
"I asked them to pay it because I didn't want to pay it," he told Nine News outside his home in Sydney on Thursday.
Senator Dastyari quit as manager of opposition business in the Senate and consumer affairs spokesman after sustained pressure for allowing a Chinese donor to foot the bill for a travel overspend and reportedly taking a pro-China stance on the South China Sea at odds with Labor's position.
Asked what was going on in his mind when he accepted the payment, the Labor senator admitted: "Frankly it's pretty obvious not a lot."
He repeated earlier comments that he'd paid the price for his mistake and his resignation was the best thing he could do for the good of the party.
PM hypocrite on political donors: Dreyfus
Malcolm Turnbull reckons Labor leader Bill Shorten refused to sack Sam Dastyari himself because he was "frozen and terrified" by the embattled senator.
Senator Dastyari's self-inflicted resignation from the opposition frontbench underlined Mr Shorten's failure in leadership, he said.
"Frozen, terrified by this 33-year-old junior senator... the leader of the opposition did not have the courage or the integrity to stand him down himself," the prime minister told reporters on Thursday in the Laotian capital Vientiane, where he is attending the ASEAN summit.
He questioned what Senator Dastyari's "hold" on Mr Shorten was and his command of numbers in the Labor caucus.
"Bereft of a leader, he had to take the sword into his own hands and dispatch himself," the prime minister said.
"It's an indictment of Bill Shorten's lack of leadership, lack of courage."
Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is all-talk, no-action on political donation reform.
Mr Dreyfus believes Malcolm Turnbull's preference to ban all corporations and unions from donating - which has been ruled unconstitutional by the High Court - would limit donors to "very wealthy individuals like himself".
"I call on him to sit down with Labor as soon as he gets back to Australia and we can get somewhere on donations reform," he told ABC on Thursday.
