It’s all over bar the shouting – former Eddie Obeid gopher, Sam Dastyari, will be the next ALP senator from NSW.
Dastyari, current general secretary of the NSW Labor Party, used to work as a researcher in Obeid’s 10th floor office in the NSW Parliament.
As a 24-year-old Young Labor operative he joined Obeid’s staff after the 2003 election when the factional powerbroker was dropped from Premier Bob Carr’s Cabinet.
He arrived with recommendations from lobbyist Graham Richardson, one of Obeid’s oldest friends, and Dastyari’s father-in-law, Peter Barron, a Hawke era fixer then working for Kerry Packer.
Dastyari never publicly mentions his position with Obeid, preferring to say he worked “for Bob Carr”.
A Labor backbencher who was a frequent visitor to Obeid’s office after 2003 said: “Sam sat at the desk in Eddie’s outer office. Eddie would interrupt our conversation to call out, ‘Sam, we need some coffees’, and Dastyari would dash downstairs to collect them.”
Journalists from News Ltd, Fairfax and the ABC have all championed Dastyari’s rise from lightweight to pretend heavyweight. Not once have they scrutinised his political genealogy.
Senator Dastyari is replacing another former NSW general secretary Matt Thistlethwaite. There was no vote by party members: they simple weren’t consulted. Plus ça change ….