Faceless men still calling the shots: Dastyari moves from Sussex Street to the Senate

Convenor of the NSW Right and the State’s best-known faceless man, Sam Dastyari has been formally chosen to fill Labor’s vacant Senate position following a joint sitting of NSW Parliament today. As the ultimate Labor machine man responsible for Mr Rudd’s rise, fall and rise again, Mr Dastyari is being rewarded with a plum political gig – the latest Sussex Street heavy to be parachuted into the Senate. This makes a mockery of Mr Rudd’s much-vaunted intervention into the NSW ALP. The very man charged with fixing the NSW ALP is not only leaving within two months of the announcement but has fixed himself a Senate seat. Mr Dastyari is the direct beneficiary of the type of machine politics and factional influence Mr Rudd is allegedly seeking to ‘reform’. Just last month Mr Rudd was heralding his reforms as essential to stamp out the NSW ALP culture. Yet they have gone nowhere, exposing the move as nothing more than another election fix. Unanswered questions also remain about Mr Dastyari’s close political relationship with his long-time supporter and mentor, the disgraced former Minister Eddie Obeid. If Mr Rudd was serious about stamping out factional influence in NSW and reforming the cancer that is the NSW ALP, then he would not be rewarding the ultimate faceless man with a spot in the Senate. 21 August 2013