Craig Thomson

An email was sent to almost every politician in Australia this week saying that someone should cut off Julia Gillard’s head and s**t down her neck. Politicians receive emails like this quite often.

They are also sent to those of us in the press. On any given day I would receive 20 to 30 emails from people I have never met who are really angry about something.

They range from people who are obsessed with the apparent fiction of climate change to others peddling filth about the prime minister’s appearance or her private life, sending in photos with stupid captions, and so on.

Continue reading "Abbott’s crass logic: trash the Parliament in order save it" »

Under pressure himself over his crusade against Craig Thomson, Tony Abbott has moved to present a softer side, suggesting that the ex-communicated Labor MP should quit politics for, ... wait for it, his own good.

“The best thing for everyone, to take the pressure off him, to take the pressure off his family, would be for him to leave the parliament,’’ the Opposition Leader told the Nine network during his regular Friday morning spray.

Mr Abbott acknowledged that the NSW crossbencher was under “enormous’’ pressure but offered no apology for his constant references to Labor’s “tainted’’ vote, his attacks on Fair Work Australia, (since redefined as the author of a rigorous piece of independent investigation) and his ceaseless prosecution of both the Government and Thomson.

For Julia Gillard subject to renewed leadership discussions by powerful forces inside her own party, this is a full-blown existential crisis.

Continue reading "This concern for Thomson won’t change the script" »

Craig Thomson’s wife Zoe must really love him. His political career is over. His reputation is shredded. He has become the butt of a national poor taste joke. And yet he continues to put up a front - blaming everyone, EVERYONE, but himself for the situation in which he’s landed.

He can only be doing it for his wife. When you love someone you want to believe them, but you can only believe them if they give you something to hold on to. And so Thomson is giving the mother of his children his ever expanding denials to cling to.

He’s being aided in this bizarre soap opera by the Labor Party, which is simultaneously defending him and barring him from the Caucus. The moral relativism being practiced in Canberra at the moment is almost comical, and Thomson is in the strangest state of career limbo you can imagine.

Continue reading "There’s no one Thomson won’t burn to save his skin" »

Speaking of yourself in the third person is usually a sign that you’re suffering from delusions of grandeur, martyrdom or both. And so it was with Craig Thomson’s speech to the Parliament yesterday, which he used to lash out at the media, the Opposition, Fair Work Australia, his former colleagues at the Health Services Union, unnamed Labor Party staffers…indeed pretty much everybody.

He also invited the people of Australia to reflect on the real Craig Thomson, the wide-eyed young idealist who cut his teeth in the union movement winning award protections for radiographers, the family man whose pregnant wife has been hounded by stalker television crews, the big-hearted local member who encourages Dads on the NSW Central Coast to read books to their kids.

If Craig Thomson was meant to give a speech which was a restrained and methodical line-by-line explanation of his actions, he clearly didn’t get the memo. This was a bucket job of the highest order.

Continue reading "Craig Thomson speaks. Meanwhile, in Australia…" »

Like a good movie director, Craig Thomson knew the scene which would get the most viewers should be kept until towards the end, and that is when he finally addressed the allegations he on seven occasions hired prostitutes.

But he also knew that this was the allegation for which he had to have the strongest defence, the most convincing line of rebuttal. And he just didn’t.

As Mr Thomson said today after around 35 minutes of speaking: “One of the things I have difficulty in making an explanation about - and I’m certainly not going to use parliamentary privilege to lie or change that - is in relation to phones and how records were on my phones. I don’t have an explanation.”

Continue reading "Thomson didn’t answer the question everyone is asking" »

At midday all eyes will turn to the House of Representatives, as the Member for Dobell Craig Thomson gives a 30-minute speech addressing the amazing credit card/prostitutes/union funds scandal that has engulfed him and the Gillard Government.

Punchers David Penberthy and the Torii (Maguire and Shepherd) will be watching. Join them in the Cover-it-Live module below as they hope for anything but an anti-climax.

Craig Thomson’s address to Parliament at noon today will be unprecedented, but don’t expect much that is new to come from it.

The basics, and great slabs of the detail, of the allegations against the former Labor MP and Health Services Union secretary have been public currency since 2009.

Mr Thomson’s version of events has also been widely known, at least in outline. We could get critical detail.

Continue reading "A big day for Thomson, who thus far is guilty of nothing…" »

Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper have allegedly made a fair few errors in their life. But perhaps their most costly mistake was choosing the wrong profession.

Politics is an unforgiving game. Your each and every move is scrutinised by the public, making it imperative for those in power to behave appropriately at all times. A single slip-up, with or without context, can erupt into a full-scale Parliamentary inquiry.

Years ago I allegedly spotted the alleged Federal Treasurer Peter Costello allegedly jay-walking across an alleged road. At the time I considered sending off my candid photograph to the papers, just for a laugh. But I stopped myself in my tracks; could a photo as harmless as that be dangerous to the politician’s long-term reputation?

Continue reading "Even slippery politicians deserve a sporting chance" »

Reluctant as I am to bowl up consecutive columns on the same subject, the spectacularly tawdry and ever-evolving scandal surrounding former Labor MP and Health Services Union chief Craig Thomson merits continuing attention. Especially as there is nothing more riding on his statement to Federal Parliament tomorrow than the continuing existence of the Gillard Government.

When I wrote last week’s column, Thomson had not yet given his so-called “explanations” to reporters Simon Benson and Laurie Oakes as to how his union-funded credit card ended up being used on everything from flash restaurants and business class travel to repeated encounters with prostitutes. All of it by somebody else, of course, as part of a sinister and elaborate plot to discredit the member for Dobell.

The one glaring question which Thomson has not answered is as follows. If as he says someone had accessed his credit card details, his driver’s licence number, and was somehow making telephone calls not just from his hotel room but also from his mobile, why on earth didn’t he go to the police himself?

Continue reading "The most laughable, err, spoof since Einfeld" »

Breakfast television viewers must have fallen out of their chairs in shock at Joe Hockey’s words last Sunday.

“It is a very honourable profession, politics,” the shadow Treasurer said.

It was the day after Craig Thomson’s extraordinary “I was framed over hookers” interview, with its claims of the most elaborate identity theft plot in the annals of Australian crime.

Continue reading "Spoof sagas consume an “honourable” profession" »

Did you know that ostriches do not actually bury their heads in the sand? They do scratch around a bit in the dirt and bury their eggs, but they don’t actually believe that if they can’t see trouble, trouble can’t see them.

The Government, on the other hand – perhaps with some help from new spin-doctor-in-chief John McTernan – somehow thinks if they don’t name their Achilles heels, those weaknesses will magically disappear.

In the new era of Things Which Shall Not Be Named they scrubbed any mention of the carbon tax, or a carbon price, from their advertisements for the compensation that starts to flow through today.

Continue reading "Labor’s new strategy of Speaking No Evil" »

He turned up on the stage of the Sydney Convention Centre yesterday looking like he was outfitted by a tailor legally barred from using the endorsement “bespoke”, and with a hairdo a trainee mate might have tended to.

He had started on the shop floor unencumbered by a university degree, and yet there he was prepared to give advice to political queens and business emperors.

He was available to help shape a $1.5 trillion economy when at his peak earning years he might have taken in just a bit over $90,000 annually.

Continue reading "Meet the anti-Craig Thomson" »

Can somebody please explain why the cops haven’t charged Craig Thomson with theft, fraud, or whatever the appropriate offence is arising from his wholly inappropriate use of his member-funded credit card at the Health Services Union?

How much more evidence do they need that he at least has a case to answer? His bizarre interview with Laurie Oakes yesterday did nothing to clear him of any suspicion, and succeeded only in further damaging Labor by keeping him in the spotlight.

The Thomson case has gone beyond being a farce. Now it is just offensive. You could even say that it is sick, as it has at its amoral starting point the fact that some of the lowest-paid workers in Australia, people who empty bed pans for a living, were enlisted to underwrite an A-list lifestyle for the most repugnant bunch of gougers ever to disgrace the Australian union movement.

Continue reading "Tell it to the court, Craig" »

When Wayne Swan is at his desk he likes to work to music. He told journalists during the week that his Budget song this year had been Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams”.

Perhaps it was two lines in the opening verse that struck a chord with the Treasurer:

You don’t know where you’re goin’
But you know you won’t be back

Continue reading "Saints and sinners, whores and lost souls" »

Parliament is growing weary of Craig Thomson riding the “presumption of innocence’’ principle for all he is worth. In fact, Parliament is tired of Craig Thomson.

The allegations against him point to behavior so objectionable that if true would be more than enough to end Mr Thomson’s public life. But it’s not just the allegations.

The Health Services Union saga has been so drawn out - over close to five years - that even the most staunch defender of the right to proper process is wondering when that entitlement becomes a means to dodge accountability.

Continue reading "Even the pollies are sick of the Craig Thomson saga" »

Right now the nation’s brightest political minds are trapped in the recycled air of Budget lock up, sniffing out black holes and poring over numbers. Shuffling papers and press releases and pinning down wonks.

Berlusconi vs. Thomson
by: toryshepherd76

As they drift past the tables of quartered chicken sandwiches and party pies to congregate at the figurative water cooler, do you think they’re avidly discussing the ramifications of the wafer-thin surplus? Do you think the drip filter coffee-fed excitement is centred around cuts to foreign aid?

There’s a fair to middling chance that it’s not. While there is a rumour doing the rounds that there will indeed be something big in today’s Budget papers that wasn’t already detailed, the chances are that people are still chinwagging about the Craig Thomson affair.

Continue reading "Who cares about the Budget? We’ve got Craig Thomson!" »

There are just 1.83 million members of trade unions in Australia, roughly 18.4 per cent of the national workforce. Take out the heavily unionized public services and the proportion is 13.2 per cent. That means about 1.3 million out of 10 million workers in all areas are employed in private companies and are in trade unions.

It’s these 1.3 million workers - a scrap of the dwindling union membership - that the Opposition will be targeting today with claims that the entire union movement is led by self-indulgent shonks who have been wasting their money and their trust.

There will be indications of this having happened in one trade union, but all will be painted by the Health Services Union brush. The Fair Work Australia report on the Health Services Union has been bouncing around the bureaucracy unloved and unwanted but today will be released to those most eager to embrace its 1100 pages of findings.

Continue reading "Union movement trying to fight off HSU disease" »

Welcome to the main strip of the small town of Wyong, in New South Wales’ Central Coast region. The strip straddles the Pacific Highway - a couple of pubs, a butcher and a few fish ‘n’ chip shops on one side; the train station on the other.

It’s 11am and there’s barely anyone walking the streets. “Look how dead it is out there,” says Danielle Suarez, who works at the printing store opposite Wyong station. Choked by traffic but not people, the quiet town is a key centre in the federal electorate of Dobell.

Local MP Craig Thomson’s office is wedged between Ecco Shoes and Express Noodles at Tuggerah’s Westfield shopping centre, just ten minutes down the road. Since 2009 Thomson has been beset by scandal over his use of a business credit card while he was at the Health Services Union. But it’s just one part of his relationship with his electorate.

Continue reading "The on-the-ground reality of how stuffed Labor is" »

Some years ago the ABC ran an excellent program called Bush Mechanics documenting the amazing resourcefulness of indigenous car nuts in the most remote parts of Australia. These guys have no access to car parts but keep their bombs on the road by stuffing blown tyres full of tightly wound spinifex, using pieces of wood as chassis parts, old pipes as steering columns and so forth.

I was reminded of this program while watching Julia Gillard outline her thinking on the scandalised MPs Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper. Whatever reasons Ms Gillard offers for the line Thomson has apparently crossed which now requires his suspension from the ALP, and for Slipper standing aside as speaker amid criminal claims of rorting and civil claims of sexual harassment, the popular take on her predicament is that this the prime minister is desperately trying to keep a clapped-out bomb of a government on the road. Like the bush mechanics, Ms Gillard has been flailing about for months using almost anything to keep her hands on the steering wheel of government.

At almost every turn – most notably with the supposedly genius idea of luring the shonky Slipper away from the Coalition with the promise of the speakership – she has ended up crashed in a ditch, wheels spinning madly.

Continue reading "Will the creators of this government now destroy it" »

Australian politics at the moment is a strange sort of Wonderland. It’s filled with odd characters – some weird, some slightly sinister – and it’s all more than a little bit nonsensical. Some voters are stamping their feet in frustration at the stupidest tea party they’ve ever been to, while the more violently inclined are calling for decapitation.

In the most recent chapter, Greens Leader Bob Brown disappeared back up the rabbithole, sidelined Labor MP Craig Thomson’s alleged adventures have shrunk his stature significantly, while Liberal-turned-Independent Speaker Peter Slipper’s problems seem to be experiencing unstoppable growth.

Yesterday mining magnate Clive Palmer announced he wants to join the party. He wants to challenge Treasurer Wayne Swan in a battle that seems to have just a whiff of the personal about it – Swan and he have been engaged in a war of words over the mining tax and the role of billionaires in public life.

Continue reading "Australian politics gets curiouser and curiouser" »

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Julia Gillard moved to disperse the “dark cloud” over Parliament by further distancing Labor from embattled pollies Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper. Here is political editor Mal Farr’s take - and find all the latest news at news.com.au.

The cost of holding onto a minority government is angering senior Labor figures frustrated by the non-stop arm wrestle since the inconclusive 2010 election.

“Maybe we should have told the Greens to get stuffed and gone on our own,” said one exasperated Labor voice last week.

So many votes have been lost keeping the Labor government afloat the negotiated survival has guaranteed it will be sunk. Labor has been compromising itself into defeat. The “get stuffed” approach still might be an option. Julia Gillard has 18 months to convince voters she stands for solid and distinct policies, not what she can wrangle through a Parliament riven by dozens of competing agendas.

Continue reading "Gillard may need to consider the “get stuffed” option" »

Julia Gillard has jettisoned one of the burdens she has been lugging around in the minority government cart - Craig Thomson. She will probably have to unload another, stood-aside Speaker Peter Slipper, if he doesn’t do it for her. Read all the latest at news.com.au.

Both have been tolerated by the Prime Minister because of her fears about the wretched numbers Labor has in the House of Representatives. But to make room for them on the cart she has had to dump what many voters would see as appropriate standards of regulation of behavior.

The Prime Minister appeared to be ready to tolerate anything to stay in power. And the claims against Mr Thomson and Mr Slipper - still untested and still denied - are of totally unacceptable practices.

Continue reading "Thomson slips away from Labor. What next?" »

Last Friday, Minister for Mental Health and the Ageing Mark Butler gave Canberra correspondents a pre-announcement briefing on his aged care reforms.

Silkily handling a complex brief, he fielded questions on the $3.7 billion package, the biggest shake-up of the area in decades.

Aged care of course is a political and demographic mine-field with its burgeoning demand, under-supply, competing interests, regulatory problems and much social and familial guilt thrown in.

Continue reading "No comfort for Gillard even if Slipper dons robes again" »

One of the best expressions of morally ambivalent political pragmatism came from American president Franklin Roosevelt, who said of the murderous Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza that “he might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”.

Such strong language should obviously not be applied to describe the controversial and short-lived former Speaker of the House of Representatives Peter Slipper. Slipper is not a brute, but he is clearly something of a buffoon. His cross-party nickname Slippery Pete rightly suggests that he is more comic than corrupt.

But the Machiavellian sentiment behind Roosevelt’s aphorism helps explain why the Coalition held on to their man for so long, in full knowledge of his propensity for weirdness, and despite the fact that he had memorised every eddy, tributary and byway of the parliamentary entitlements handbook. More tellingly, it helps explain why a desperate minority government led by Julia Gillard would have taken the enormous gamble of wooing Slipper across, despite also knowing that he came equipped with his very own filing cabinet of alleged travel rorts, spurious overseas study tours, and murky stories of peccadilloes involving young male staffers.

Continue reading "The rorting oddball Labor should have avoided" »

Remember when Julia Gillard stood shoulder to shoulder with her two new allies in Government Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor and they declared, hand on heart, that this was the beginning of a new era in accountability? A new paradigm, in fact.

Hard to believe it was just on 18 months ago that the Labor PM said that her deal with the Independents meant her minority government would be held to higher standards of accountability.

“So let’s draw back the curtains and let the sun shine in, let our Parliament be more open than it was before,” she declared with flourish.

Continue reading "Ain’t no sunshine when she’s governing" »

Fair Work Australia may as well make public its massive, three-year report on the Health Services Union now that it is almost certain it won’t be used to mount criminal prosecutions.

It is probably going to happen anyway through the Senate committee system. We can expect soon to have the dubious victory ceremony of downloading a 1100-page report.

The Opposition has been agitating for its release but will not be totally satisfied should the document be made available. That’s because the Opposition could be denied its ultimate trophy.

Continue reading "Keep recommendations secret, said Tony Abbott" »

It’s been so long coming that release of the report into credit card use within the Health Services Union is being hailed as a huge stride in resolving this lingering, messy controversy.

But all we’ve done is slip from one inquiry into another, after which there might be yet another examination of the facts, this time in a court. And we don’t yet know what those facts are.

The Fair Work Australia report filled 1100 pages. It is possible that not one of those pages contains evidence of criminal activity by Labor MP Craig Thomson - the former HSU national secretary - despite the fears of the Government and the hopes of the Opposition.

Continue reading "Thomson’s lynch mob left frustrated for another day" »

The medical qualifications of Chief Opposition Whip Warren Entsch extend to “railway porter, insurance clerk, real estate salesman, fitter and turner with a mining company, grazier, and crocodile farmer.”

A doctor he ain’t, but there he was on AM this morning examining the entrails of Labor MP Craig Thomson.

Thomson has a doctor’s certificate excusing him from this week of parliamentary sittings because of “abdominal pain”. This has become quite an issue because of a number of complicating factors:

Continue reading "When is a sickie not simple? When you’re Craig Thomson" »

Those in the business of applying the defibrillators to Julia Gillard’s prime ministership have been quick to talk up her grace and decency during the tent embassy mayhem, while also pointing an accusatory finger at Tony Abbott for inciting the chaos.

Whatever sympathy Gillard may have received after her frightening ordeal will now be undermined by the resignation late Friday of a junior staffer who had stupidly worded up the protesters as to Abbott’s whereabouts. Nevertheless the PM clearly handled herself with courage and compassion.

The footage revealing her asking the security service to ensure Abbott would also be safely escorted from the restaurant was a credit to her. She didn’t know she was on camera, and there was nothing confected about her concern. Laudable, too, was her comment later that day that her only regret was the violence had disrupted an event recognising the courage of emergency services crews. At a more human level, Gillard simply looked terrified as she was rushed from the building. Only the most jaundiced critic would have felt for her as she was dragged to safety.

Continue reading "Year starts with shoe off, trouble ahead is a shoo-in" »

It takes a certain sort of rich self-regard to be in as deep a political hole as Labor MP Craig Thomson and yet still deliver your own leader a dud hand in a major newspaper. Perhaps the Member for Dobell has decided to go all-in as a final flutter (insert further tortured gambling metaphor here).

His oped this morning in The Daily Telegraph essentially used praise of the Prime Minister’s dumping of the Wilkie deal on pokies to suggest her initial decision to commit to the plan had “flown in the face of proper policy making.”

Never mind Thomson’s precarious hold on his career is one of the reasons Julia Gillard felt compelled to woo disgruntled Coalition MP Peter Slipper into the Speaker’s Chair. And now that Wilkie has declared the PM dead to him, she’s back in the position of relying on Thomson not to buckle under the pressure of a range of disastrous accusations, thereby forcing a by-election. The situation is more complicated than a game of Mahjong.

Continue reading "She doesn’t know whether to hit red or black" »

If MPs want to argue they are worth $185,000 a year base pay they might first explain how Labor’s Craig Thomson spent 42 days overseas on a taxpayer ticket and couldn’t describe what he did in his own words.

He had to crib from the speeches of others – word for word. They might also explain how independent Speaker Peter Slipper, when a Liberal, could go through $7000 on overseas telephone calls using the mobile funded by taxpayers.

All up he spent $14,000 on telecommunications in six months. The man just isn’t that popular.

Continue reading "This is no good time to give MPs a payrise" »

Monday, 22 August, 2011

Return from question time. Paul Howes (AWU) is sitting in my office chair. Says he’s checked my office and has found no less than eight items that were manufactured overseas. As a representative of the manufacturing sector he feels I owe him an explanation for my unAustralianness. Ask Howes if I could have my chair back. Howes says he’ll do better than that, he’ll replace it with an Australian made seat. Will invoice my secretary.

Tuesday, 23 August, 2011

Morning: Met with Same Same (marriage equality group) and GetUp to discuss same sex marriage.

Continue reading "Journal of the Minister for Community Concerns" »

Like all moral upstanding citizens of Australia, I have been shocked by the revelations about Craig Thomson.

This is a man who, if the allegations are to be believed, ripped thousands of dollars off his employer so he could blow it all on hookers, booze and good times.

But despite all of this he is still being criticised.

Continue reading "In defence of Craig Thomson" »

If you want an insight into the debased language of modern politics, look no further than the cheat sheet about the Craig Thomson credit card scandal which some silly sausage from the ALP left sitting on the benches during Question Time this week.

The document, swiped by the Opposition and subsequently released to the media, contains a series of war-roomed hypothetical questions which Labor MPs may face from the pesky press about Thomson’s use of a Health Services Union credit card to fund horizontal hijinks at some of Australia’s leading knock-shops.

The funniest thing about the cheat sheet is that it’s written in a confected conversational tone, a bit like those guides they give the staff at Indian call centres so they can use slang and vernacular when they pester you during dinner time.

Continue reading "Craig Thomson, another top idea from NSW Labor" »

A “CT’” scan of the Gillard Government shows up the problems clearly enough.

Two of them actually: the Carbon Tax and Craig Thomson.

Two seemingly harmless initials that in this case spell disaster. But what to do about it?

Continue reading "Craig Thomson, carbon tax and a risky road to nowhere" »

In perhaps his most extraordinary exclusive to date, Joe has obtained the credit card statement that could bring down Labor MP Craig Thomson and with him the whole Gillard Government.

See below for this truly explosive document…

Continue reading "The Bill" »

There are few spectacles more engrossing in politics than watching Craig Thomson squirm painfully amid insistences he has been falsely accused of particularly grubby conduct.

One of those few things is the sudden and carefully crafted indignation of the Opposition, complete with furrowed brows and head-shakes of disbelief at the enormity of the Thomson accusations.

It’s an interesting contest - allegations which could, if true, remove Mr Thomson from any role in public life; an Opposition which wasn’t interested in these claims of serious misconduct until it saw the opportunity for political gain.

Continue reading "Scent of an election fuels Tony’s faux outrage" »

Journalism, as they say, is the first draft of history. This week Julia Gillard defended journalism and history might just reward her as a result.

On Monday, The Daily Telegraph splashed with what can only be modestly described as a ball-tearing yarn about some appalling alleged behaviour by repeat troublemaker Craig Thomson.

Not content with having approved thousands of dollars spent on hookers during his time as a union boss, nor the alleged misuse of union funds during his election campaign, nor even the use of ALP members’ money to pay his lawyers to bail him out, Thomson is accused of blowing up at a female charity worker who happened to be MC’ing a forum on the controversial pokies cap.

Continue reading "Hey Labor, make history not beef stroganoff" »

It has become an article of faith in Australian politics that a background as a union official is an undesirable and unrepresentative form of life experience for anyone embarking on a career as an MP.

Like any sweeping generalisation it is sometimes rubbish and sometimes true. There are plenty of former unionists in our Parliaments who have a sound knowledge of the industry their members worked in, a desire to see those industries prosper, and who were generally ambivalent towards industrial action, preferring to see negotiated outcomes which looked after the interests of both workers and employers. 

At the other end of the spectrum you find party careerists who relish the political power and lifestyle afforded by being a union official and use their position largely _ if not entirely _ as a springboard to land a seat.

Continue reading "Credit card Craig a problem Gillard doesn’t need" »