Guest Post: Union corruption

A guest post by Peter Freedman:

Former Health Services Union official Craig Thomson has been a naughty boy. He used a union credit card to visit ladies of the night, obviously to try and recruit them as union members.

Thomson is also a Labor MP. To be a Labor MP in Australia it is not quite compulsory to have been a unionist, but is certainly an advantage.

The dominance of unionists in the Parliamentary Party is distinctly unhealthy. Not only does it give the LNP a stick to beat the left over the head with, but union officials are not always nice people to know

Not that union connections are restricted to leftwing parties. Bill iBirch once confessed to me he had joined the Meatworkers Union when just a lad, probably not something he would bring up over the pinot noir at a National Party pissup.

Thopmson’s dilemma has been all over the rightwing papers and the LNP, understandably, are having a ball. Constant demands that Thomson release to the media his laundry list and the extent of his vegemite addiction are in the news every day.

Questions beginning “Given that the member for Dobell is a proven debaucher of innocent young females, could the Minister please explain……” tumble out one after the other like clowns in a circus.

And the police, Fair Work Australia and a very suspicious man in a grubby raincoat and felt fedora who looks definitely ASIO, have all been ferreting away to get the dirt on Craig T.

Julia Gillard is standing by this ratbag because she has no choice. When the cold winds of a snap election are blowing up your majority skirt all you can do is try to pull it down even if the result is that you protect a scumbag like Thomson.

My prediction is that Thomson will not be charged and if he is will not be convicted. Fucking a prostitute using your penis and someone else’s credit card is hardly the crime of the century.

Thomson, incidentally, was born in Wellington.