Former Labor leader Kim Beazley has joined a growing chorus of senior opposition figures telling the embattled Sam Dastyari he needs to consider resigning from the Senate in the wake of mounting revelations about his relationship with China.
Mr Beazley, a noted defence and foreign policy specialist who also served as Australia's ambassador to Washington, was speaking after Fairfax Media revealed Senator Dastyari had tried in 2015 to urge then shadow foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek to abandon a meeting with a pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong.
The New South Wales senator has also come under fire for tipping off a Chinese Communist Party-linked billionaire that his phone might have been tapped by intelligence agencies and contradicted Labor policy by taking a pro-Beijing line on South China Sea disputes.
Mr Beazley said Senator Dastyari needed to consider the example of politicians who've stepped aside when their ongoing problems have made it hard for their parties to stay on message.
"Sam needs to ask himself the question, and he probably is asking himself the question, how do I advance the cause of the Labor Party - by being there or going away?" he said.
"As he looks at his obligations to the party and the country, and the capacity of the party to focus on its arguments ??? What is his best service? And he may want to take a look at examples of folk who've got caught up ??? and find themselves in a position where they're a distraction."
The former chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Labor's Michael Danby, denied suggestions from the government that might be a double agent for a foreign power but gave Mr Dastyari little comfort, suggesting "he's got sucked into an area that he didn't know much about and he's been punished for it".
One Labor frontbencher, Linda Burney, urged Senator Dastyari to "consider his position" while another, Catherine King, said he should "reflect upon" whether he should remain in Parliament.
Labor sources overwhelmingly expressed extreme frustration that the Dastyari situation was damaging the opposition after what would otherwise be regarded as a very successful year.
One Left faction figure said the onus was on the Right to "use its legendary leverage" to resolve the matter.
"We could surrender the lead in the polls over this, because right now, it is anything but resolved and everybody knows it," the figure said.
But frontbenchers Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke, leaders of their respective Left and Right factions in NSW, said Senator Dastyari had already been punished.
"The questions about Sam Dastyari have been answered and he's paid a price for it, for that lack of judgement," Mr Albanese said on Monday afternoon.
Mr Burke slammed as "pathetic overreach" Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's suggestion that Senator Dastyari was "a double agent" who could not sit in the Senate. He said Labor leader Bill Shorten had made it clear Senator Dastyari would face a "challenge for future promotion".
Former Labor foreign ministers Bob Carr and Stephen Smith both declined to comment.
Mr Beazley said Senator Dastyari was "on a spectrum" of politicians apparently influenced by foreign powers.
"This guy is not standing out like a shag on a rock. This guy is just the most comprehensive example of what is an across-the-board pattern and that includes a lot of donations to both sides of politics."
He also stressed that it was the Chinese government, and not most ordinary Chinese Australians, that was pressing to influence Australia's foreign policy.
