Labor has moved to increase pressure on Malcolm Turnbull over foreign political donations in Australia, as the party scrambles to defend NSW senator Sam Dastyari amid revelations he had a Chinese-linked company repay an official travel bill.
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Opposition Leader Bill Shorten accused the Coalition of teaming up with the Greens to block improved transparency and disclosure measures in Australia's system of political donations and called for co-operation from the government on a range of new measures.
"When Mr Turnbull meets business leaders overseas, he has the opportunity to make it clear donations from foreign interests should not be given to Australian political parties," Mr Shorten said.
"It's beyond time that Mr Turnbull joined with me in repairing a broken system."
Mr Shorten said Labor's push for donation reform at the last election – which included dropping the disclosure threshold from an indexed $13,000 to a fixed $1000 and a new ban on so-called donation splitting – stood in contrast to Mr Turnbull's reported donations to the Coalition's campaign of more than $1 million.
More than 110 countries, including the US, UK and Canada, have bans on donations to political parties from foreign interests.
In addition to a ban on foreign donations, Labor wants to ban the receipt of anonymous donations above $50, link public funding for candidates for political office to campaign expenditure and see new offences and increased penalties created for abuses of donation disclosures.
Mr Shorten will call on Parliament's joint standing committee on electoral matters to consider real-time disclosure of political donations, a long-held policy position of the Greens.
Senator Dastyari has resisted calls for his resignation since Fairfax Media revealed he asked a private company, the Top Education Institute, to repay an overspend on his travel bill of $1,670.82.
Run by businessman Minshen Zhu, the company has links to the Chinese government and has supported both Labor and the Coalition.
Mr Turnbull accused the NSW powerbroker and Labor's leader in the Senate of "cash for comment" conduct, as Senator Dastyari said he respected the Chinese government's position on the South China Sea dispute.
On Sunday, Senator Dastyari confirmed two bottles of wine he had previously declared were bottles of Penfold Grange, worth more than $700 a bottle.
Given to him by Chinese donors the Yuhu group, the wine was donated to charity.
Labor frontbenchers Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke defended Senator Dastyari on Sunday but conceded his actions were outside community expectations.
Mr Albanese said he was concerned about foreign political funding and said China, Israel and Taiwan were among the biggest spenders of sponsored travel and donations in Australia.
Mr Burke told ABC TV's Insiders Senator Dastyari had not broken any rules.
"It was technically within the rules [but] didn't change the fact that it was way outside community standards," Mr Burke said.
