Shorten to Dastyari: quit extra positions

Labor leader Bill Shorten has told embattled senator Sam Dastyari he must resign from senior parliamentary positions.

Senator Dastyari, the opposition's deputy whip in the upper house, is the subject of new claims about his relationship with a businessman with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

"I told Senator Dastyari that his mischaracterisation of how he came to make comments contradicting Labor policy made his position untenable," Mr Shorten said in a statement on Thursday.