Fair Work Australia and Craig Thomson

Craig Thomson, Labor member for the federal seat of Dobell, is accused of misusing his HSU union credit card to buy prostitutes and make cash withdrawals worth more than $100,000.


Fair Work Australia (FWA) was set up by the Labor government when it dismantled the Industrial Relations legislation of the Howard and Keating governments and was heralded as an independent, unbiased umpire.


FWA’s investigation into Mr Thompson is now in its fourth year and the public want to know why. When you look into who actually runs the FWA, it’s becomes clear that union men and women are sitting in judgement of their colleagues who just happen to be union men and women. The Labor Party and the union movement have been married for a very long time and 8 out of 10 senior ministers in Julia Gillard’s government are ex union officials. Tony Abbott had a point when he said ''Fair Work Australia should be eager to publish all correspondence, emails, file notes and phone records of contact between it and ministers so that there can be full confidence that there has been no political interference in this investigation.''






FWA say it has amassed more than 6500 pages of material and that the people subject to the probe have until March 5 to respond to the case against them. The media, like hungry wolves, will be waiting for this day to arrive with bated breath but the PM recently said it would be “highly improper” for her to ask FWA to make public their findings, which only adds fuel to the fire.


But Fair Work Australia isn’t all bad, it does some good work. Around 150,000 lowest-paid workers, most of them women, have been awarded a pay rise ranging from 18 to 41 per cent. It will benefit 120,000 women who work in difficult jobs such as working with the disabled, domestic violence, sexual assault, running homeless shelters – important people vital in looking after our most vulnerable. Well done Labor.


But getting back to the Fair Work Australia report on Craig Thomson. We all know what the bottom line is to all of this – if Craig Thomson is found guilty of corruption, he will be forced to leave Parliament which could result in the collapse of the Gillard government.