Craig Thomson Is a Crook

The allegedly independent member for Dobell, Craig Thomson, has asserted that he will “sue anyone who claims that he’s had sex with prostitutes”.  The discovery process of any suit should be interesting; I, for one, should like to know what other explanation Mr. Thomson might offer for his providing funds misappropriated from union members to prostitutes.

Anyway, I, Informal (of The Waterfront, Hampden Road, Battery Point, in Tasmania), hereby assert that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, based on available evidence and reasonable conclusions drawn therefrom, Craig Robert Thomson, the member of the House of Representatives for the Division of Dobell, New South Wales, did, on many occasions, when he was National Secretary of the Health Services Union, have sexual congress (or some other form of sexual relations) with prostitutes; I also assert that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, Craig Robert Thomson improperly paid for the aforesaid sexual services either by way of credit cards issued by the Health Services Union without proper authorisation to obtain such services thereby or by cash wrongfully appropriated from Health Services Union accounts; furthermore, I assert that Craig Robert Thomson subsequently attempted to conceal the evidence of his sexual activities with prostitutes, and the improper payments therefor, by way of further wrongful payments or bribery and other malfeasance, and that he knowingly and deliberately misrepresented his activities in his duplicitous apologia to the House of Representatives.  Accordingly, I assert that Craig Robert Thomson is a corrupt liar and a pornerastic cheat.

UPDATE I:  see “So Sue, Craig Sue”, by Prof. Bunyip; as well as “Craig Thomson’s Statement to the House of Representatives”.

UPDATE II (24 October):  see “Fraud squad raids Craig Thomson’s house”, by Malcom Farr, wherein the devious Thomson lies, yet again, by claiming that he has “done nothing wrong.”

UPDATE III (25 October):  see “Police closing on criminal charges against Craig Thomson”, by Steve Lewis and Andrew Clennell:

Victorian police are considering multiple criminal charges against […] Thomson, including in relation to allegations he received secret commissions while he was a union boss.

The NSW and Victorian police have been closely co-operating on some aspects of the investigation into claims the embattled MP illegally spent tens of thousands of dollars in Health Services Union funds.

UPDATE IV (25 October):  see “If Craig’s relying on handwriting, he might be pushing it uphill” by Michael Smith. 

UPDATE V (31 October):  see “Thomson defamed, says solicitor”, by Kate McClymont, in The Sydney Morning Herald: 

Craig Thomson’s new solicitor, Chris McArdle, has issued his first defamation threat over the suggestion that his embattled client used union funds to pay for prostitutes.
“Our client has never used other people’s money or his own money to pay people for sex with him.  Anyone who says the opposite will be sued,” Mr McArdle said.
Last week Katrina Hart, a branch president of the Health Services Union, took up the challenge.
“Craig Thomson, you are a liar, you paid for prostitutes with my money and the money of every other HSU member.  You [took] $100,000 from us.  I dare you to sue me,” said Ms Hart, in The Daily Telegraph last week.
Ms Hart received a threatening letter from Mr McArdle claiming her comments were defamatory.  “We will commence proceedings … most likely after we have achieved dismissal of the defective and wrongly based litigation that has been commenced against him.”

After they have achieved dismissal of litigation against Thomson?  Nothing will happen very soon, then.
See also “Craig Thomson Never Slept with Prostitutes”. 

UPDATE VI (31 January, 2013):  listen to Ben Fordham and Michael Smith discuss the arrest of Craig Thomson and related matters.

UPDATE VII (22 April):  see “Thomson has $60 in bank, court told”, by Kate McClymont:

Embattled federal MP Craig Thomson has only $60 in the bank and owes $23,000 on credit cards, documents filed in the Federal Court reveal.
Mr Thomson is facing criminal and civil proceedings relating to allegations of wrongdoing while he was a Health Services Union official, before he entered Parliament in 2007.
His legal team has asked the Federal Court to postpone the civil action being taken against him by the Fair Work Commission until after the criminal proceedings were dealt with.
Mr Thomson is facing 154 criminal charges including using his union credit card to pay for prostitutes and fine dining.
Running the cases simultaneously would be an enormous financial burden, the Federal Court heard this week.  Solicitor Chris McArdle filed an affidavit stating Mr Thomson had $60 in the bank and no other source of income except for his parliamentary salary of $190,550, plus travel allowance of $260 a day when Parliament was sitting.

Poor lamb!  With a salary of only four times that of the average member of the union he defrauded, it’s a wonder he has the strength to visit prostitutes or to watch pornographic movies!

He owed $23,000 on credit cards.  His monthly mortgage repayment was $3,400 and living expenses per month exceeded $5000.  Mr Thomson's wife earned less than $15,000 per year.
The affidavit indicates Mr Thomson may well re-contest his Central Coast seat of Dobell, because he would receive no payment when he left Parliament, but expected to receive $95,275 before tax if he contested the seat.  The affadavit did not explain how this figure was calculated.

Shane Dowling, at Kangaroo Court of Australia, asks reasonable questions, “Craig Thomson MP – Who’s Paying His Legal Bills? Which Union Is It?”:

Federal MP Craig Thomson has an estimated legal bill of $300,000 for his current criminal and civil proceedings which he is defending.  So who is paying the bill?  It is only a couple of years ago that the NSW Labor party had to pay $350,000 in legal bills for Mr Thomson so he did not go bankrupt and get kicked out of parliament.
The mail is it that the Transport Workers Union (TWU) have stepped in with a slush fund to help with the reddies needed to pay his legal expenses.  The TWU is run by the well-known slush fund operator, fraudster, thief, money launderer and National Vice President of the Labor Party, Tony Sheldon.  There is also mail that the AWU might have also set up a slush fund on the side to help Craig Thomson.  As we all know the AWU is well versed in running slush funds, just ask the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
The biggest question in my mind though is, has Justice Christopher Jessup of the Federal Court of Australia been deliberately misled by Craig Thomson and/or his lawyer Christopher McArdle in matter VID798/2012 – General Manager of Fair Work Australia v Craig Thomson?

UPDATE VIII (30 April):  Craig Thomson is appealing for donations, according to this site:

Ever a man of the people, the demotic but pornerastic MP commendably eschews fancy grammar and a superfluity of commas, you might notice.  Why people might abuse “common law principals”, I cannot tell.

UPDATE IX (1 May):  Mark Worthington, one of the fund-raisers for Mr. Thomson, is a retired solicitor and former Labor candidate.  Heath Aston, in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald—which, one might think, ought to have access to accurate electoral records—, claimed, wrongly, that Mr. Worthington “was a former Labor candidate for the federal seat of Calare”; however, he was an unsuccessful candidate, twice, for the State seat of Bathurst.

UPDATE X (1 May):  we may listen to Mark Worthington talk with Ben Fordham.  Mr Worthington reckons that Craig Thomson’s parents “have been to hell and back”.  He asserts that he is supporting Mr. Thomson from “an acute sense of injustice” because the pillars of British justice, the “right to silence and presumption to innocence” are being threatened or ignored or demeaned or destroyed or something; he complains that Mr. Thomson has been treated “like a pariah”, though he’s innocent, and insists that it’s outrageous for people to believe that Thomson is guilty.  We must believe that Craig Thomson is innocent because Craig Thomson says he is.  Uh huh.
For a man who claims legal expertise, Mr. Worthington hasn’t quite worked out that the presumption of innocence is a legal rule concerning the burden of proof in criminal trials.  It exists only within the context of a criminal trial, and need stop none of us (except for the constraints of defamation laws and the like) from calling proven crooks and liars crooks and liars.  Craig Thomson is a crook who lied, and continues to lie, and misled Parliament.

UPDATE XI (1 May):  see also “Craig Thomson Sets Up a Slush Fund but Calls It a Trust Fund to Pay His Legal Bills” at Kangaroo Court of Australia.

UPDATE XII (2 May):  see “Thomson pressured over fighting fund”, by Steve Lewis and Lanai Scarr: 

It has emerged that Mr Thomson’s ailing father, Jack, was behind the fund, a website declaring it “accepts donations for [Thomson’s] legal defence”.  […] 
Under pressure to disclose further details of the fund, Mr Thomson denied making any misleading statements as he launched his public appeal.
"I did not mislead anyone over the setting up of the web page. But I do note there was some inaccurate reporting," he told News Limited.
He also denied that any taxpayer-funded resources—or staff members—were used to promote the fund.  […]
Mr Thomson also defended taking his wife, Zoe, and two young children on a fortnight's holiday to Bali. 
“Anyone who has faced the type of pressure and continued scrutiny that my family has endured should be able to take a private two-week break,” he said. 
“Unfortunately, due to the continued harassment by media, my family has not been able to get that break in Australia.  The cost of our holiday is cheaper than most similar holidays in Australia.”

Thomson denied that staff members were used to promote his fund-raising?  Well, we know the worth of any denial from Craig Thomson.

David Gardiner is one of Mr. Thomson’s staff, paid by the taxpayer.

UPDATE XIII (4 May):  listen to Michael Smith and Sen. George Brandis discuss the Craig Thomson Legal Defence Fund:   it could be a ploy by Mr. Thomson to avoid listing gifts on the Register of Members’ Interest, and his insistence that he did no wrong is contradicted by the FWA investigation, Sen. Brandis argues, wherefore his appeal for donations might constitute obtaining money by deception.

UPDATE XIV (19 July):  so much for the claim that he knew nothing about the use of his credit card used for porn, hookers and slap-ups; see “Thomson may not dispute credit card use”, by Pia Akerman:

Former Labor MP Craig Thomson appears to have abandoned his claim that he did not use union credit cards to pay for escorts, with his lawyer today telling a court it was “very likely” there would be no dispute about who used the cards.
Mr Thomson, who is running for reelection in his seat of Dobell as an independent, has applied for the 173 charges relating to his alleged misuse of union funds to be decided by a magistrate instead of proceeding to a judge and jury.
Making the application today, Mr Thomson's barrister Greg James QC said it was likely there would be no issues about the facts of the case, and the matter instead related to whether Mr Thomson had authority for the spending as national secretary.

UPDATE XV (19 July):  the member for Dobell will argue, it seems, that it the burden of proof rests on the prosecution to establish beyond doubt that it wasn’t against the rules to pay for hookers, porn and slap-ups on his union’s cards:

The fraud case against embattled MP Craig Thomson will not go before a judge and jury.
Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg today ruled it was appropriate for the case to be heard in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.
He said the case, while potentially lengthy, was not complex and did not come close to exceeding the court’s jurisdiction.
Mr Thomson will be unlikely to dispute the fact his used union credit cards were used to pay for porn and prostitutes, the court heard.
The former Labor MP has previously vigorously denied more than 170 charges brought against him over claims he misused a union credit card for personal use including to pay for escorts.
But his lawyer today told the court there was likely “to be little debate” about the facts of the case and “little dispute” over the charges.
But he said there would be questions raised over the authority Mr Thomson did or didn’t have to use the cards.  […]
“Despite some media reports, I am not making any admissions.  But there is a threshold issue of who had authority to use the credit card, which must be heard first [Thomson said].

UPDATE XVI (18 February, 2014):  Mr Thomson has been found guilty “of six charges of using HSU credit cards to pay for sex, as well as other charges including theft”; the magistrate found Thomson must have known he had no authority to use his union’s credit card to pay harlots’ fees.  See also “Thomson found guilty of fraud, theft charges”, by Adam Cooper:

Thomson was found guilty of most of the allegations against him—that he paid for sex, withdrew cash from ATMs and bought cigarettes for his then wife with credit cards issued to him by the Health Services Union while he was the union’s national secretary between 2002 and 2007.  […]
Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg also found Thomson guilty of using union funds for his personal use after he had left the HSU and taken up his role as the Labor member for the NSW seat of Dobell.
But Mr Rozencwajg found Thomson not guilty of charges related to the purchase of in-house movies in hotel rooms while on HSU work trips, and delivered a mixed verdict related to allegations he illegally used union funds on travel expenses for his then wife, Christa.
The magistrate found some of the allegations related to spousal travel proven, but dismissed others.
In total Thomson was charged with more than 140 offences, including theft, obtaining property by deception and obtaining financial advantage by deception.  […]
Mr Rozencwajg said it was ‘‘an affront to common sense’’ that Thomson could think he could use a union-issued credit card to pay escort workers, when he, as the head of the union, had previously redrafted the code on the use of HSU cards.

UPDATE XVII (19 February, 2014):  in various fora critics of Mr Thomson are insisting that he should face the wrath of Parliament for misleading it.  Many people have even suggested that the former member could be imprisoned for six months.  At Catallaxy Files I replied to another commenter who claimed that Thomson “stood up in the parliament under privilege and deliberately lied”:

Unfortunately, that’s not true.  I maintain that he wilfully attempted to mislead Parliament in his dissembling, deliberately deceptive discourse, and should be tried [by Parliament] therefor, but he was careful not to utter a specific lie.  For example, though he pontificated on the presumption of innocence, he never said in his lengthy, lachrymose speech “I am innocent”; instead, he warily said, “I have consistently from day one denied any wrongdoing in relation to these issues”.  That was a true statement: he had always denied any wrongdoing.

As I said when Craig Thomson made his duplicitous apologia in the House of Representatives, a forthright, honest and innocent man says, “I’m innocent”; only a man with something to hide sneakily utters such equivocations as “I have consistently from day one denied any wrongdoing in relation to these issues” without ever actually saying “I’m innocent”.