Craig Thomson's tragic demise

I feel a bit sorry for Craig Thomson and can believe he came close to suicide when his reputation and standing in the community was trashed.  But the strange thing is he's still in denial and obviously needs help.

Last year, former Labor MP Craig Thomson was ordered to pay the Health Services Union $231,000 in compensation and $146,000 interest as well as a penalty of $80,000 for stealing money from his union.

He was given a payment plan to avoid going to prison but he says he has no money to pay it and the February deadline has well and truly passed.

A defiant Thomson said yesterday he has no intention of paying and doesn't care about the union's threat of further action.  Why?  Because the union is spending thousands of dollars pursuing him in legal fees.

HSU National Secretary said Chris Brown said "We haven't walked away and let him off the hook, the question for us is how much more money do we want to spend on the case."

Thomson said "It's a matter for them if they want to spend money on lawyers."

He told Justice Jessup at the time he was at risk of suicide and swore in an affidavit that he had no job and no money.

"The respondent has shown no contrition nor even, at this late stage, any appreciation of the seriousness of the matters found against him" Justice Jessup found. "Quite clearly, there is no basis for treating him compassionately on the grounds that he has learned his lesson."

To add to his troubles, he could receive a formal reprimand for lying when he told Parliament in 2012 month after month, that he had "done nothing wrong" and his enemies had stolen his identity to "set me up with a bunch of hookers."

He was such a convincing liar, many believed he had to be telling the truth.

But the sad thing is he still refuses to apologise to the union members for stealing $200,000 of union funds, including thousands of dollars for sex services.  And after all this time, he's still saying he didn't do it.

"It's a little hard to maintain your innocence and apologise at the same time" he said.