Yeah she's already made a statement to the ABC where she basically tries to push her candidates for the HSU elections based on this arrest.

Can't wait till she gets charged.

In other news, Mary Jo Fisher managed to avoid getting a criminal conviction despite pleading guilty to the same crime twice within a year. I think I need a job in politics.

i think Slipper's looking for fresh meat staffers

Does everybody really give a shit if he did do the horizontal shuffle with a hooker however long ago it was?

I personanlly don't give a hoot. If the majority of the population think Craig Thompson is unfit to do his job, then why do the rest get a glowing reference? He must be the only man in our parliament that has ever done that, are you people kidding.

Look at the facts, there is no proof. What hard evidence that bloody stupid show ACA had was a stat dec signed by a hooker, stating she jumped his bones 6 or 7 years ago... LMAO what joke! More like she saw a 5 figure sum and thought there's my ticket to ride and going to Miami to snort all the coke she can. A working girl is flat out remembering 6 days ago let alone 6 years. Im surprised there weren't 10 hookers brawling in the Channel 9 carpark saying it was them who he saw for a reasonable amount of money. Then again she hadn't been paid 'as at the time' the storey went to air, ACA hadn't paid her fee. Who said hookers dont give tick?

Hookers aside, I'm more concerned with the fact that how the liberal government carry on day in day out. The Coalition in this country have become masters at trial by media and every idiot is falling under their spell. Let's not forget how many years of investigating Craig thompson it took, to get a result of zero, um no divid end here folks, what a waste of tax payers money that was (well at a guess tax payers money).

I back Craig Thompspn whether he is guilty or not, because be F&$ked if I want Tony Abbot running this country, I will have to move to New Zealand! Can't wait for news papers all across our country having Abbott posing in his dick togs on the front page once a week over Summer. Gee if we all wish hard enough he might jump on board with the Bondi Ice Bergers and we witness him in an array of budgie smugglers the whole year round, great for the Austalian image & he's the bloke who runs the show!

Now I might sound ridiculous, but I don't agree with how harsh the majority of people are about Thompson, and society getting so uppity. My point is if he didn't fight his way thru that battle which clearly continues, we are all stuffed coz Tony Abbot will end up moving into Kirribilli House. So if everybody is ok with the opposition leaders wife jumping on national morning television to convince us her husband is a good bloke and doesn't use aggression or bully towards women with high profiles etc is a joke. Grow some balls Tony or grab them out of your wife's hand bag & don't use your bullshit media tactics on us.

Anyway, finally we have a politician that can get a root in a brothel with a fist full of $50's!

Lastly, just wondering if our government or any politican with an ounce of power is doing any thing to give Julian Assange a chop out? My mistake forgot they have already feed him to the lions.......
End of rant.

There are some tricky legal problems in the way of a prosecution of Thomson:

http://sites.thomsonreuters.com.au/w...ace+Insight%29

The most serious is the "out-of-time" point, which may be why the proceedings have been commenced in the Victorian Registry of the Court, in an attempt to get out from under the problem which arises from the interaction of NSW and Commonwealth law.

Regardless of the outcome, if the legal fee's alone are enough for him to declare bankruptcy, now than the Labor party have refused to keep paying his bills, will he be forced to quit parliament - and hence a by-election would be held in Dobell? (I'm not up with the rules)

the timing makes it likely to be post election though when no one will care

So as a lawyer are those problems bigger or smaller than the fact that the entire FWA report has been pretty much entirely discredited by a KPMG investigation into the report which the FWA actually requested itself?

Is the FWA exposing themselves to damages by relying on evidence gathered in a report they know to be flawed to press a civil case?

Quote:

Originally Posted by phoneyhuh

Regardless of the outcome, if the legal fee's alone are enough for him to declare bankruptcy, now than the Labor party have refused to keep paying his bills, will he be forced to quit parliament - and hence a by-election would be held in Dobell? (I'm not up with the rules)

It would be very unlikely that he would declare bankruptcy prior to the hearing - he could run the case himself without lawyers if his finances were that stretched. The last thing he would want to do is bankrupt himself and force a by-election which would cost him the remainder of his MPs salary. Either way, it is unlikely that the matter would be heard and determined prior to the election.

Griggle. the fact that the FWA made a complete hash of the report against Thomson doesn't mean that competent lawyers couldn't construct an evidentiary case which establishes that Thomson breached his duties under the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act. The escorts have been generating all the column inches but the greater problem for Thomson may be the HSU spending on sponsorships which do not appear to have conferred much benefit on the HSU and were instead for the purpose of improving Thomson's chances of winning Dobell. It may be a bit like jailing Al Capone for tax evasion, but in fraud cases banal allegations stick much more often than sexy allegations.

The whole reason the Labor party exists is so that the Unions can get representation in Parliament though. The benefit of them funding his campaign is - quite clearly - that all unions expect that members of Parliament raised from those Unions will help represent that union in parliament and on the party room floor.

That whole premise seems highly ludicrous and completely at odds with our entire political system to me. So can shareholders sue the boards of corporations that donate corporate money to lobby groups like the IPA if that money is used in the campaigns of sitting Liberal members? It's essentially the same thing.

FRAUD squads from NSW and Victoria have raided the home of embattled federal MP Craig Thomson.
It's believed they executed a search warrant around 7am at his home on the NSW Central Coast, Channel 7 has reported.
The former Labor member, now independent, is accused of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of union funds on prostitutes, cash withdrawals, travel, hospitality and electioneering when national secretary of the Health Services Union between 2002 and 2007

Good to see Fairfax running stories on all their papers talking up Kate McClymont for getting three Walkley nominations for her Craig Thomson stories.......

You know the ones where she showed a credit card slip with Craig Thomson's name spelt as "Thompson," with a transaction denied code on it as proof that Thomson had used hookers then after getting a photo-copy of Thomson's drivers license through a FOI request, included that picture with the receipt whenever it was shown in Fairfax papers to make it look like the drivers license had been copied when the fake credit card was used.

Good to know Walkleys are as worthless as I've always thought they were.

This made me lol

HSU elections coming up

this is the website for candidates backed by the super squeaky clean Kathy Jackson, who is in no way corrupt whatsoever


http://cleanthemout.com.au/

cant stop thinking 'clean the mout'

stolen
brilliant

Yep, I read that as clean the mout the first time I read it too

Anyone for a Sus Anal Bum Party?

Just heard on the radio that the police have arrested him and taken him to the station, out if his electoral office.

Yeah, NSW media release here:

http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/la...bWwmYWxsPTE%3D

150 fraud charges by Victorian Police. Assuming he pleads not guilty, I'm not sure that it makes a lot of difference to anyone other than Thomson given that there is next to no chance that the charges will be heard and determined prior to the election.

Is it normal for police to charge someone with so many counts of fraud for this sort of alleged crime? Basically given he is alleged to have stolen $300,000 they are giving him a charge per every alleged $2000 misappropriated.

A quick google search finds Mariea Geertruda Maxwell in SA stole $700,000 from her employer and got charged with 32 charges of fraud.

A solicitor in Melbourne who stole $116,483 from her employer only received a single charge of stealing and a single charge of making a false document.

Are the Victorian police not confident about their ability to get convictions for most of the charges so just trying to fling enough mud to make some stick or is this fairly standard for this sort of fraud?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Griggle

Is it normal for police to charge someone with so many counts of fraud for this sort of alleged crime? Basically given he is alleged to have stolen $300,000 they are giving him a charge per every alleged $2000 misappropriated.

It depends upon the facts - each separate act of fraud is a separate charge. If you're working in the accounts department and set up bank instructions so that every time an invoice from your employer gets paid it diverts $5 into my account, then if you get caught after amassing $5,000, that's 1000 counts of fraud that you can be charged with.

This doesn't mean that you get 7000 years in prison - when it comes to sentencing, judges apply the principle of totality so that the sentence is appropriate for the totality of the offending, rather than some mathematical formula based on the number of charges.

How on earth did that solicitor only get a single charge when "She funnelled $116,483 owed to her law firm into her private account between July 2007 and September 2008" then?

Must have known a good barrister.

How many NSW ALP politicians will be in jail by the end of next year? No wonder the party wants to relocate to Victoria.

I thought they'd already moved to Parramatta and planned to stay there (which is just as stupid and shallow as moving to Victoria).

wow.....what a hammering.

Gillard and the ALP are dead, dead i tell you

Quote:

Originally Posted by gravyishot

How many NSW ALP politicians will be in jail by the end of next year? No wonder the party wants to relocate to Victoria.

Christ I hope they get Obeid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by legal-affairs

It depends upon the facts - each separate act of fraud is a separate charge.

Given we now know that one of the charges is for buying an icecream eight years ago and another charge is for paying for a pay tv movie in the hotel he was staying in on a business trip, I'd say I was right on the money when I wondered if the police had simply charged him with anything they could think of in hopes that their entire case doesn't get thrown out of court.

Given we also know the warrant specifically bars Thomson from seeing prostitutes (rather than barring him from seeing witnesses) and the fact that the media were informed where to be for the arrest by the police, the police's behaviour here is pretty suspect. It looks like they are involving themselves in a professional capacity into the political arena.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Griggle

Given we now know that one of the charges is for buying an icecream eight years ago and another charge is for paying for a pay tv movie in the hotel he was staying in on a business trip, I'd say I was right on the money when I wondered if the police had simply charged him with anything they could think of in hopes that their entire case doesn't get thrown out of court.

Given we also know the warrant specifically bars Thomson from seeing prostitutes (rather than barring him from seeing witnesses) and the fact that the media were informed where to be for the arrest by the police, the police's behaviour here is pretty suspect. It looks like they are involving themselves in a professional capacity into the political arena.

Not to be deliberately contradictory but it is not hard for me to imagine that there is a member of the police who is possibly a conservative, and probably a regular source for media outlets, who, without authority, leaked the arrest details i.e. there wasn't necessarily an authorised notification by the police to the media about the rest.

Having said that, it's not that hard for me to imagine that there are members of the policeforce who think so highly of themselves that they wouldn't dare not call unnecessary publicity to themselves so they could say, Hey looky-here: see what I can do.

I'm not saying all the charges are crap, he may well have a case to answer for some of it.

It just sounds like the usual police get up to when charging a suspect with every possible thing they can so that if they fuck up the case by (failing to fill out paper work correctly / losing chain of evidence / perjuring themselves in court / get caught planting evidence / etc) they can hopefully still get some of the charges to stick.

It just sounds like many of the charges are a massive waste of the courts time.

I don't think it's a matter of wasting the time of the courts when we are talking about a character who allegedly stole union funds -funds which were raised from a segment of australia's working poor. If I was a hospital orderly who believed in the merits of union representation and I paid my dues each pay period I wouldn't be that keen on Craig Thomson getting a soft touch.

if anything, the police should be doing everything possible to nail this guy.

Yes he will be a political casualty and a dead weight on gillard, but labor's future is dependent partly on working people having confidence in the value of unionism.

So it turns out the police lied about the contents of the warrant and that Thomson had never been asked to turn himself in. Now the police claim he had been sent a summons but when they were asked if Thomson had received the summons refused to comment. Which in case you are wondering means that they hadn't actually issued him with a summons.

Turns out the reason Thomson was strip searched was also directly a result of the cops involved being dicks and attempting to force Thomson to spend a night in jail (by waiting till the end of the day before denying him bail) but they were foiled because two guys from corrective services stayed after hours to process Thomson's bail request and a magistrate also signed his bail release forms after hours (he had already been strip searched by this stage however).

---------------------------------

So now we wait to see if the police can actually criminally charge someone with fraud if that person used a credit card issued in their name while working for a company that had no policy on credit card use.

LA, if the case gets dismissed and if only a civil case can be pursued against Thomson then could the police involved may have been the only people in this incident to have actually committed a crime (by arresting him for a non-criminal offense within 5 sitting days of Parliament therefore attempting to prevent him from being able to vote)?

After all isn't the entire reason Federal Pollies can't be arrested on civil grounds or forced to attend a trial within 5 days of Parliament sitting an attempt to prevent people from trying to stop Member's from attending Parliament by getting them thrown into jail on petty offenses?

Well whatever happens, I'm sure it's going to be amusing watching everyone involved scrambling to cover their arses/bases.

More lulz today from the Victorian police in court:

Unable to provide a witness list or brief for the case. Say they'll totally have them ready when the court goes back into session on the 22 March. Maybe.

Maybe my understanding of the law is a little low here, but how the fuck can they have arrested him and charged him without a case to put before the court? Do they have Nassios (guy who took 4 years to write the FWA report) working for the prosecution on this one?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Griggle

[Maybe my understanding of the law is a little low here, but how the fuck can they have arrested him and charged him without a case to put before the court? Do they have Nassios (guy who took 4 years to write the FWA report) working for the prosecution on this one?

You can have enough to decide that charges should be laid without necessarily having the full formal brief of evidence compiled - I assume that is the distinction.

So what about the police not being able to provide a list of the witnesses when the police set one of the terms for his bail release as not being able to contact certain people - who they are still unable to identify?

Keystone Kops imo.

He also used this card for flights, I'm assuming they'd keep footage at airports a bit longer than the brothels etc. Even if they can't get him on the brothels etc, they've probably got him in the other areas.

http://wixxyleaks.com/2013/04/26/cra...on-fwa-update/

FWA has adjourned 90% of its charges in the civil case

As the article says, civil burden of proof is much lower so doesn't bode we'll for most of the criminal charges

Quote:

Originally Posted by CheelWinston

http://wixxyleaks.com/2013/04/26/cra...on-fwa-update/

FWA has adjourned 90% of its charges in the civil case

As the article says, civil burden of proof is much lower so doesn't bode we'll for most of the criminal charges

That's a spectacularly inaccurate report of what happened. FWA (which is now called FWC) didn't adjourn anything - 90% of the case was adjourned because the relevant legislation provides that applications for pecuniary penalties are stayed when criminal charges are laid. Thomosn applied for the remainder of the civil case (that is, the bit which doesn't overlap with the criminal charges) to be stayed, but that application did not succeed.

Here's the decision:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/c.../2013/380.html

Whoah, looks like I'm the sucker what's born every minute

Apologies all

http://www.independentaustralia.net/...win-a-walkley/

pretty interesting piece

I'm starting to get more and more suspicious of this case. I originally thought he was bang to rights but it really seems like a stitch up