Civility plea a ploy to avoid scrutiny

Lobbecke

IT is the height of hypocrisy for Labor and gallery journalists to call for the opposition to ease the pressure on the government because of its potential impact on Craig Thomson's health.

The Thomson-Health Services Union scandal is a political drama of the highest order because it tests not only Labor's credibility but possibly the government's hold on power. And according to the exhaustive findings of Fair Work Australia, the saga hinges on blatant and extensive misuse of union members' funds.

Blame lies with the union, with Thomson, with the ALP and the government. No blame attaches to the opposition, which is doing its job, albeit aggressively, by pursuing financial accountability and a parliamentary resolution.

Most, surely, do not wish Thomson any personal ill-will, and can understand that he must be under enormous personal pressure. There are obvious ways for him to deal with this, such as quitting parliament to resolve the outstanding issues as a private citizen.

Tony Abbott argues that the government could assist by refusing to accept Thomson's vote, thereby allowing him to look after his own health and legal defence without regard for the government's parliamentary numbers.

There are arguments against this option, the most powerful being that it disenfranchises the people of Dobell. Yet, if the government's concern is for Thomson's wellbeing, it must be considered.

But in this age when people prefer to play the victim rather than face up to their responsibilities, Thomson must be called out for the way he has chosen to deal with this issue.

His parliamentary statement was a disgraceful attempt to elicit sympathy, frighten off his critics, blame others and obfuscate on the key facts.

Thomson failed to include a plain, straightforward denial of the crucial allegations. He failed to explicitly deny to the parliament that he had ever paid prostitutes with his union credit card, or used it for other personal purposes, or used cash advances for such indulgences. We can only speculate as to why he would not make an unambiguous denial but being conscious of the consequences of misleading parliament, and a desire to sound sincere in his statement could have been factors.

In opening his statement by reading out hate mail, Thomson took parliament to a very low place. Most politicians, sadly, receive ugly, abusive and threatening letters and emails. Only the desperate and unwise would ventilate them. And only the entirely cynical would attempt to use them to garner empathy when it is their own actions that are in question.

Unfortunately, in this parliament we have already heard Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie talk up threats in a similar way.

We can only hope that ASIO or AFP officers are counselling our MPs how intemperate it is to air this sort of material. It can only encourage its authors.

In my experience with these matters, even the most credible threats, and actual incidents of violence, are best dealt with discreetly in order to lower the temperature and ensure no copycats are encouraged.

Yet instead of pushing back against this grandstanding, the government and many in the media have followed Thomson's lead, heightened emotions and made plaintive calls for the opposition to back off on its scrutiny in order to relieve the pressure.

The MP himself has even fronted the cameras and called for the media not to push him "to the brink". Labor heavyweights, such as Anthony Albanese and Joel Fitzgibbon fanned the flames, even invoking the suicide of Labor MP Greg Wilton a decade earlier.

This sort of emotional blackmail, aided and abetted by some journalists, is a new nadir in our political debate. At one level it is as hysterically puerile as the "you'll be sorry if you leave me" threats of a teenage break-up. On another, it is dangerously playing politics with someone's wellbeing.

It cannot ease the emotional pressure, in fact there must be a worry that it exacerbates the strain.

It is right to worry about those caught up in public controversies and ensure they have appropriate support, but not to use these concerns to fend off scrutiny.

This strategy is of a piece with the Labor's longstanding narrative about the Opposition Leader's "relentless negativity" which argues that the political debate is now more aggressive than ever before.

This is clearly untrue. What is probably true is that Labor has never been under such sustained and aggressive attack before. In other words, the boot is on the other foot.

For instance, when Labor senator John Faulkner called rogue senator Mal Colston "unscrupulous", "mercenary", "contemptible and despicable" and said he was the "most abominable representative" who had "skulked" and "slimed" into the chamber, he was not showing a great deal of concern for Colston's emotional state of mind. There are many other examples.

Even in this parliament Julia Gillard accused Abbott, in the wake of the Queensland natural disasters (that took 35 lives) of trying to "surf these floodwaters to Kirribilli". Former prime minister Paul Keating elevated the term "scumbag" to parliamentary debate, and former Labor leader Mark Latham called John Howard an "arselicker" and used parliament to call fellow columnist Janet Albrechtsen a "skanky-ho". Coalition MPs such as Scott Morrison have had to put up with constantly being abused as heartless racists.

Labor, to be sure, has deservedly built a reputation, not just for stinging invective, but for playing hardball and imposing a "whatever it takes" philosophy to politics. We have seen this in ruthless deals at state level to win minority government and we saw it in the vicious cutting down of Kevin Rudd in 2010.

We saw the same approach when the Prime Minister promised the independents whatever it took to form government after the 2010 poll, and the opportunistic low-point of this mentality came in last year's sleazy deal to lure Peter Slipper into the Speaker's chair, allowing the dumping of the gambling reform deal with Wilkie.

Yet, with the government under threat thanks to problems of its own making, we hear calls for civility. Just when it is politically convenient, there is a focus on moral obligations, duty of care and the need for detente. For the Coalition, it must be galling.

Having said all that, it does present Abbott with a chance to take the moral high ground. He is in such a strong position that he can afford to make a stand for a less abrasive polity, and hold Labor to it.

On one level, the opposition's refusal to accept Thomson's vote in any circumstance is a step in that direction, on another it is a clever ploy to remove the need for the government to seek a pairing for Thomson to get him out of the chamber.