Good morning, and welcome to The Briefing.
Labor Senator Sam Dastyari will leave parliament at the next election, saying his “ongoing presence detracts from the pursuit of Labor’s mission” and he wished to “spare the party any further distraction”.
Labor leader Bill Shorten praised Dastyari after the news broke, saying he was “one of the instigators of a banking royal commission” and had “been in the front of calling out Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party racism”. Dastyari will not leave the Senate immediately, leaving Labor the option of giving his vacant seat to former NSW premier Kristina Keneally if she loses the Bennelong byelection this Saturday.
Read more here
Alex MacKinnon, The Saturday Paper
