THE case of the recanting prostitute on Today Tonight last night is just a tawdry sideshow to the Health Services Union affair. But whether the woman is lying now or when she signed an affidavit for Channel Nine’s A Current Affair, claiming the embattled Dobell MP paid her for sex, is immaterial. The Fair Work Australia report is what counts, and that shows $500,000 of HSU members’ money was allegedly misused by Thomson on prosititutes, fine dining, high living, and election expenses when he was the union’s boss. Whether it was this woman or some other prostitute paid with HSU members’ money is just a tacky detail. The credit cards say enough.
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Yes we should trust the organisation Miranda told us not to trust last year
November, ‘11: “The hidden grenade in the Fair Work Act, he says, is the “good faith” bargaining provision, which gives unions a veto over what goes on in the workplace. “In effect it is forced bargaining and forced agreements. It gives companies a whole series of rights to force companies into negotiation.” If, for example, a company such as Baiada says it is happy paying award wages to its workers and does not want an enterprise bargaining agreement then that triggers intervention by Fair Work Australia. “The outcome is it becomes compulsory to have an EBA”. Even with declining membership, unions are flush with cash for fights. Phillips points out that 1.8 million members paying $600 or $700 a year is more than a billion dollars a year income, plus the cash cow of industry superfunds, and regular government handouts. Under Labor, unions are richly rewarded. Their lawyers become judges and members of tribunals. Their leaders become politicians and members of Cabinet. The stench from the Health Services Union scandal hangs over Parliament House, but the conga line of union apparatchiks filing into Canberra continues. This is Labor’s disease.”
Update: Peter Wicks in Independent Australia today: “What a grubby chapter, that served merely to further tarnish Craig Thomson’s tattered reputation. It should be noted that the Opposition put forward a censure motion over this ACA story when it first emerged. Now it seems Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne have gone to ground, as this entire affair begins to blow up in their faces. Godwin Grech, anyone? Maybe it is just as well she didn’t have sex with Thomson, as the evidence would suggest it was a freebie. Looking at the credit card receipt that was shown as evidence, we see that it is the Bank Copy of the receipt — that is, the copy that the bank should have received. This means that, unless Fairfax got the slip from the bank somehow, the bank never received the slip — and without that no payment would have been taken from an account. Only in “Jacksonville” are banks known for their telepathic powers of perception.
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Coalition MP Mal Washer, a GP, spotted the danger signs early. He checked on Thomson’s welfare and then issued a warning on ABC TV that continued pressure could be deadly. Tony Abbott backed off as a result, telling Parliament ‘’at a human level, I have a great deal of sympathy for the member for Dobell’, and shifting the complaint to Julia Gillard for keeping him in the hot seat. But the government’s narrative was set in stone, and trickled on into the weekend columns of amenable journalists, that brutal Abbott’s “blood lust” for power was hounding a sick man to self-harm. Chief Whip Joel Fitzgibbon fleshed it out, talking about colleague Greg Wilton’s suicide 12 years ago, a despicable tactic for so many reasons not worth canvassing. Anthony Albanese followed suit, looking like a cat expecting a saucer of milk. But Abbott had foiled them again. More nuanced and thoughtful a personality than his enemies ever allow, to their detriment alone, Abbott knew, as the public does, that Thomson has gone beyond censure.
TONY Windsor’s hot seat will be even hotter tomorrow, after Craig Thomson makes his statement to Parliament justifying himself. Then it should be the turn of the independents to justify their support for Thomson.
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Is Abbott going to have to justify his “support” of convicted assaulter Mary Jo Fisher and accused assaulter Bill Heffernan? Is Chris Pyne going to be made to release his phone records so we can find out if he has engineered a sexual harassment claim? Is Abbott going to be asked why he claims the carbon price is a tax when it isn’t one, or why he claims the carbon price is the world’s biggest carbon tax when it won’t be, or why he can attack a government policy for being a “big new tax” while having a paid parental leave scheme which is actually a big new tax? These questions are based on fact, the allegations against Craig Thomson are weak at best, from an organisation with ties to the Opposition Leader. Whether an opposition will get a free ride to the lodge with no scrutiny on its policies or members is more of a concern than whether one member of the house misused money of a union he worked for years ago. But I guess that’s the point, why actually prove to the Australian people that you’re suitable for government when you can just overblow scandals until you win by default?
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How do Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott justify their vote of confidence in Craig Thomson yesterday? For that is the message they sent by voting with the government against the Opposition motion to suspend Thomson for 14 days. Their assistance allowed Thomson to escape parliamentary censure in the wake of the damning Fair Work Australia report alleging financial mismanagement and rorting at the Health Services Union. The report alleges Thomson spent $500,000 of HSU members’ money on prostitutes, ATM cash withdrawals, fine dining and election expenses in his central coast seat of Dobell,
The FWA investigation into Williamson and Thomson is in its third year. Last week, Jackson criticised the delay, alleging government interference. Gillard has defended Thomson, saying he does “a good job”. She has never defended Jackson, who has been subjected to intimidation so ruthless she was hospitalised with a nervous breakdown. The story only hit the front pages because Thomson’s seat was crucial to the minority government. But it is a rare opportunity to look into the union oligarchy, awash with cash and largely unaccountable, except to Fair Work Australia, which is stacked with ex-union apparatchiks. The Putinesque alliance between unions and Labor is welded by money - $230 billion from the cash cow of union-controlled super funds, with their secret fee structures.
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“Ms Jackson is also subject to a Fair Work Australia investigation.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-31/hsu-head-calls-for-external-review-into-thomson-inquiry/3803498
“Heading the mining donors was Queensland magnate Clive Palmer, whose companies sent $959,000 to the Liberal and National parties. Queensland Nickel was the largest individual donor to the Liberal Party with $500,000. The commission’s figures appear to show no mining dollars going to Labor.
The tobacco industry was similarly one-sided, although in its case that was because Labor has stopped accepting its donations.
British American Tobacco and Philip Morris sent a combined $264,000 to Coalition parties, much of it in small parcels, the most intriguing of which was a donation of $999 to the South Australian Liberal Party.”
http://m.smh.com.au/national/rocksolid-support-for-coalition-as-miners-donate-their-millions-20120201-1qtiq.html
“Clubs and hotels also pulled out the cheque books, after the Independent MP Andrew Wilkie struck a now-defunct pokies deal to help Labor form government. Clubs New South Wales has disclosed it spent around $1 million last financial year on campaigns and more than $400,000 on donations. The New South Wales division of the Australian Hotels Association told the commission it gave nearly $860,000 in donations, mainly to the Liberal and National parties.”
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3420798.htm
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