Disgraced Labor MP Sam Dastyari has “paid a high price” for accepting money from a Chinese donor, former politician and journalist Maxine McKew has told The New Daily.

Mr Dastyari announced his resignation from the Labor frontbench on Wednesday afternoon after a week of intense media scrutiny.

He was the manager of opposition business in the Senate and spokesman for consumer affairs.

Ms McKew said Mr Dastyari was now paying for “not doing what he should have done in the first place: write a cheque from his own account” for the $1600 in travel expenses.

Labor leader Bill Shorten said he appreciated the senator admitting “he got it wrong and accepting the consequences”.

“Sam is a young bloke with a bright future ahead of him. He has a lot more to offer Labor and Australia,” Mr Shorten said in the statement.

The Labor Party owes me nothing and I owe the Labor Party everything. Bill Shorten and the team don't deserve this distraction.

— Sam Dastyari (@samdastyari) September 7, 2016

But as Mr Dastyari returns to the backbench, Ms McKew questioned whether the events of the past two weeks would spark any real reforms to donor regulation.

‘Too much of a distraction’

“I’m not a shy person. I’ve never been afraid of the spotlight,” Mr Dastyari told media on Wednesday afternoon.

The Senator’s apology press conference did not go well on Tuesday. Photo: AAP

“But in the past week, it’s clear that the ongoing examination of my behaviour is taking attention away from bigger issues facing Australia and Australians.”

Mr Dastyari said he had freely admitted that accepting payment for travel expenses from businessman Minshen Zhu was a mistake, but did not mention the controversial comments attributed to him regarding Australia’s stance in China’s South China Sea dispute.

Maxine McKew wants to see change to donation regulations. Photo: ABC

Ms McKew suggested the MP had decided not to take questions from media after his resignation press conference on Tuesday had quickly disintegrated.

Mr Shorten said “Sam made a mistake and now he’s paying a heavy price”, clearly paving the way for the 33-year-old to remain an active member of the Labor Party and Senate.

“I’m confident he will continue to make a strong contribution to my team.”

Shorten ‘should have acted sooner’

Treasurer Scott Morrison told ABC’s 7:30 that Mr Shorten should have removed Mr Dastyari sooner.

“Who would’ve thought that Sam Dastyari had higher standards than Bill Shorten,” he said.

“I mean, it’s Sam Dastyari who’s taken the decision today, it was Bill Shorten who was continuing to defend him.”

Cory Bernardi spearheaded the campaign for Sam Dastyari to resign. Photo: AAP

Ms McKew said the result was not what Mr Shorten had wanted, but he “had obviously made the judgement that [the issue] was becoming too much of a distraction”.

A day earlier, various MPs had made clear their belief that Mr Dastyari’s position on the frontbench had become untenable.

Outspoken Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, who first drew the parliament’s attention to the issue, had called for Mr Dastyari to resign “for the good of politics”.

“Too many questions remain as to why his bill were paid by donors,” he tweeted.

https://twitter.com/corybernardi/status/773053947921567747

But Ms McKew said the real test would be whether either party used the incident as a vehicle to change the current campaign finance regulations – which technically allowed Mr Dastyari’s donor to pay the expenses.

“I would like to see them come clean for comprehensive campaign finance reform,” said Ms McKew, a director at the John Cain Foundation, which has campaigned heavily for change in this area of politics.