Some say Santa came early for Craig Thomson this year, however the truth is there is no political mileage to be gained by continuing to pursue him.
Yesterday Craig Thomson got off 49 charges on a technicality.
That technicality is that he was not guilty.
Years later and thousands of police hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, in taxpayer expense and the result is a firm Not Guilty for 95% of the charges.
The Coalition that promised to “end the waste” were happy to waste the resources of the courts and police forces in two states for years to end up finding less than $4,000 worth of spending that they could charge Thomson for, and even those charges are highly questionable, and perhaps still subject to appeal.
So while the lawyers all got to loosen their belts and make out like bandits, it will be the taxpayers footing the bill for this witch hunt, and more than likely their grandkids.
Many will remember Tony Abbott’s childish carry on about the “tainted vote” of Craig Thomson. The ridiculous carry on that saw Abbott and Christopher Pyne fleeing parliament like schoolgirls running from a mouse.
Well it turns out that Thomson’s vote never was tainted, in fact after his days in court Thomson is now even clear to have another run at parliament should he choose to do so. Although I doubt he would.
As for the trial by media, the mainstream by and large have shown themselves to be little more than a hangman jury. Even now as they lick their wounds in defeat the media still talk about prostitutes on the basis that Thomson may have spent cash on prostitution. Of course this is despite their being absolutely no evidence whatsoever of what he spent cash on, as the judge said he could have spent it at Bunnings for all we know.
Thomson was fined $25K for the misuse of union funds related to cash withdrawals from his union credit card, these amounted to around $3,500.
Home for Xmas with the family
Photo – News Ltd
However it needs to be remembered when this much effort has been put into destroying someone’s life by a government and a police force or two there is always going to be enormous pressure for Thomson to be found guilty of something.
As for the 13 charges Thomson was found guilty of, it is interesting to note that these charges were amended by the Judge after the hearing. This means that Thomson and his legal team were completely unable to mount a defence against these charges. Knowing what these charges were to be would more than likely have changed the entire strategy of their defence. After all it is hard to defend yourself against the unknown. The ammending of charges after a hearing is highly unusual and it is perhaps only the amendment to those charges that allowed Judge Douglas to find Thomson guilty of anything at all.
Many have questioned why the Judge has seemingly verbally condemned Thomson with talk about prostitutes and self-indulgent behaviour.
Many have criticised the Judge for saying these things as it appears to fly in the face of her findings and some have seen it as an unfair shot at a man who has been found not guilty of 211 charges. The Judges words have fueled speculation that the Judge may have thought Thomson guilty despite being legally bound to find him not guilty due to the way the charges were worded.
In fact, I suspect that what Judge Douglas may have been doing is something called denunciation. While this may seem like she is having a shot at Thomson, it actually means that by publicly reprimanding him the police are unable to appeal against Thomson’s sentence in order to increase it.
The denunciation also gives the media a way of saving a bit of face, kind of a win win scenario.
Meanwhile Kathy Jackson should be looking on with concern, after all the cash she testified under oath to withdrawing is measured not in the thousands but in the hundreds of thousands.
Speaking of Jackson it must please the Federal Court and the members no end to see her out on the town in Sydney on Monday enjoying herself.
Jackson out on the town, hope she gets used to men in uniforms…
The photos above were posted on her friend Michael Smiths blog site one wonders for what reason. To rub the Federal Court judges face in it? To make Victorian Police look foolish? Or just a “screw you” to the members?
Whatever Smith and Jackson’s reason her day of reckoning is yet to come.
For years I have been told that I am a fool for thinking Thomson would not go to jail and Kathy Jackson eventually would, In fact I have been swimming against the media tide for so long I’ve grown accustomed to it.
But guess what?
The tide is turning…
Save Wixxy from his own budget crisis by donating here
Like Wixxyleaks on Facebook here
For All Your Video Production Needs
Follow @madwixxy
Ah, Wixxy….well done! I am pleased at the result and dismayed, but not surprised, at how the result has been reported by the MSM. They are trying very hard to make it look as thought Thomson is really guilty but got off on a technicality. Why is it that Jackson, who I thought was too mentally ill to be out on her own, is able to thumb her nose at the justice system with seeming impunity. Is she dumb, being badly advised or does she know something that we foolish mortals don’t? Please keep up the good work…can’t wait to show this latest to some my redneck, LNP faithful acquaintances.
Good luck to Craig and his family. Well done Peter. The story will continue and I hope Jacksons day of reckoning will come. I also notice this in the Age about Ashmar. – http://www.theage.com.au/national/shorten-ally-wins-by-a-thumping-margin-in-health-services-union-poll-20141217-129361.html
Be interesting to see how the MSM run with this, looks like Shorten will be the next target.
I find it very strange that a judge can amend the charges? How can this happen? It is true that if you don’t know what your dealing with, then how can you defend yourself?
Does this put into question the integrity of the justice system or the judges? I’m trying to understand how this can occur. The prosecution produce their case and the defendant defend themselves against those allegations, end of story, but it seems every time the prosecution case turned to shit, they moved the goals.
It seems we can have no faith in our justice system, the police, and especially our politicians.
Anyway, well done and have a safe Xmas & new year.
Congratulations, Peter, on many years of excellent investigative work that has enabled you to draw your accurate conclusions from genuinely empirical evidence. You are a real scientist, unlike the ideologically driven mainstream hacks who have skated over the surface of events to select the details that have made Thomson appear to be guilty of crimes which he did not commit. As he has said throughout the past more than 5 years, why would he show remorse for crimes which he did not commit?
Your interpretation of “denunciation” is fully justified by the events. I think we have to interpret Judge Douglas’s actions in terms of what she has done rather than in terms of what she has said. She has kept Thomson free of having a criminal record. She has given him the opportunity of making a new life for himself, free of the “taint” that Abbott and Pyne imposed upon him well before he was ever charged by the highly suspicious actions of the Victorian police. It wasn’t Thomson who was “tainted” but all of those who did their very best to crucify him on the altars of their particular self-interests.
Nevertheless, as things stand at the moment, Abbott and Pyne are in the winners’ seats, supported by others like Jackson and Lawler and Bolano, who also appear to be winning. Thomson has lost his political career, paid out a small fortune in fees, been fined $25,000 and has to find a new life. I think he will succeed because of the inner strength and belief in his own integrity which sustained him and his very loyal, intelligent and courageous wife throughout all of this time. Let’s hope justice is coming to all of those who have cost the tax-payers millions in pursuing a dodgy persecution.
At last some sense of it all has come thru!! I only live in hope Jackson,, gets hers.. She has destroyed many lives In Her vendetta against Michael Wiiliamson & Co.trouble is there were some others who escaped the net of corruption, hopefully, they will get theirs one day,, Karma. Anyone who thinks she was doing it to “save” the union, the tooth fairy lives in the back garden!!! I’m convinced she was doing it because MW wouldn’t give her carte blanch in Victoria like she had before the amalgamation. However, I’m afraid there will be too many people in high places who will lose too much FACE if she is convicted of anything… They will use the lame excuses e.g. if they pursue her “the Whistleblower” it will discourage others to come forward.. Bullocks!! If these potential whistleblowers have nothing to hide they will still come forward..
Hopefully in 2015, common sense and justice will prevail…
Merry Xmas and Happy n Properous 2015!!
All of those years and floods of public monies and personal debt accumulated.
especially- when at first the NSW police looked at the core content of the brief and said there was
nothing to answer.
Not until George Brandis politicised the case through the Federal police and went Political Legal Shopping in Victoria -did the infamous central coast media show trial arrest occur( Which coincidentally- Ray Hadley just happened to be outside Thomson’s door at the time of arrest ) —-:
Ingloriously dragged down the local cop-shop by interstate cops indignantly stripped searched
when all it would have taken– would have been a courtesy call to the Parliament Members central coast office to
request he attend the local police station to be served with an interstate brief.
Merry Christmas –the Thomson Family , Merry Christmas Wixxy
Craig and all of us owe you a debt of gratitude for your Rudyard Kipling style-:
” IF you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
style level headed reporting
Craig Thomson was found not guilty of the charges related to goods and services but guilty of ones where it wasn’t obvious what the money was spent on, the ones where he withdrew cash. He did use union money to procure goods and services not related to his employment. He did not however conspire to hide these transactions… The HSU executive simply didn’t care. I doubt they’ll get a cent out of Thomson, but its clear as glass he did the wrong thing. It just wasn’t illegal, simply ethically and morally wrong. it’d be nice if Peter Wicks would allow this possibility to emerge in his writings instead of deliberately obscuring it.
Peter, I share the congratulations posted above on your outstanding investigation and I am hugely relieved that Craig won’t be going to gaol.
I have avidly followed every word you have written on this case and tried (not always successfully) to persuade people to stick to the facts and ignore the MSM as the saga unfolded.
But after all this, I must say that as a lay person this outcome seems unsatisfactory. Your fine work notwithstanding, we are left with the impression that Craig Thomson got off on a technicality, that the judge would have liked to find him guilty but the law didn’t allow it, that he helped himself to a comparatively small amount of the union’s cash. and there remains the widespread belief that he spent some of the money on sex workers. I understand that he couldn’t afford to refute each and every allegation and some of them were too trivial to be bothered with (eg hotel video, ice-creams), but I was waiting for something big in his favour to be presented like the Bankcard Thompson fraud documents – solid evidence that would have supported his contention that he had been threatened with a set-up. Just one ‘win’ like that would have cast some pretty convincing doubt on the whole case.
But real justice is only for those with unlimited money and the odds are really against you when there’s a political motive. I can only hope that the Thomson family can find peace at last, and that Craig can re-establish himself in a satisfying career.
I have always said that if he has done the wrong thing he should pay for it. The civil matter is ongoing.
Kathy Jackson testified that the credit card was part of the salary package which would mean he could spend it on whatever he likes, however I don’t believe that.
I have said for ages that I suspect that he has spent money on his credit card that he shouldn’t have, but also suspect that it would balance out with things like coffee’s, parking meters and other odds and ends that he no doubt paid for with his own cash and didn’t claim back.
As someone who for years has done an awful lot of travel for work I know just how much spending is done out of ones own pocket on trivial things.
What is simply ethically and morally wrong is to leap to judgements on what he spent what amounts to less than $1000 per year on in cash with absolutely no evidence at all just because Tony Abbott, Rupert Murdoch, and Ray Hadley want us to think it was on something dodgy.
Far from obscuring what you claim I state how much money he has been found guilty of misusing, that he was found guilty of 13 charges and the fine handed down on those charges. I would say that is allowing the possibility.
It would be nice if the shock jocks and columnists would allow the possibility that they may have got it wrong, they have been proven wrong on almost every aspect so far.
It would also be nice if you read the piece before deciding what wasn’t in there.
Peter – I think it would be fair to say that you have a far higher regard for Craig Thomson than I do, both as a person and a trade union official. Having said that, however, I find that I am in agreement with you over many aspects of this case.
I think what many people on Smith’s blogsite (including Smith himself) are overlooking is that a judge can only determine cases on the basis of what is presented to the Court – no more and no less. And I feel the judge in the Thomson case has discharged her duty in a highly professional manner, and that her comments were both fair and reasonable. The fact is, and in my opinion, the public prosecutor and the police were incompetent and unprofessional in framing the charges against Thomson. Anyone with half a brain should have been able to identify before charges were even laid that Thomson was never going to be guilty of defrauding the bank. There was never a sufficient relationship between Thomson and the bank for this to happen. Besides, the bank received every dollar it was owed, so it is difficult to see how the bank was “defrauded” by anyone let alone by Thomson.
The question then arises – did Thomson defraud the HSU? In my view, quite possibly. But the problem is, this question was never tested in Court because the charges laid against Thomson were never couched in these terms. I think the judge might have relished the opportunity to test this very question, but this was never an option for her. She could only rule on the charges actually brought before her, and none of the charges brought before her related to fraud upon the HSU. This probably explains the judge’s insightful, and frustration-laden, comment that her Court was a court of law, not a court of morals.
The stupidity of the Public Prosecutor in the Thomson case (and perhaps the investigating police) is matched only by the stupidity of some commentators on social media. For instance, the sheeple on Smith’s website are now all bleating about the death of Australia’s justice system and the “corruption” of judicial officials. Egged on by Smith himself, these commentators have now lost faith in our country and are harking back to the nostalgia of supposedly better times. This is sheer and unadulterated nonsense, and the degree of ignorance being displayed by persons who no doubt see themselves as intelligent and erudite is frightening. These people would do well to acquaint themselves with the basic differences between criminal law and civil law. Thomson was charged under the Crimes Act (criminal law). Specifically, he was charged with fraud and theft. If he misappropriated money from his union, that is a civil law manner and has nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal law. Not all wrongdoing falls within the Crimes Act – only Government-defined wrongdoing. Other wrongdoing falls within other legislative provisions (for example, cheating the Australian Taxation Office). Still further wrongdoing does not fall within any legislative provision (for example, cheating on your spouse).
The mistake a lot of people appear to make is thinking that all acts of wrongdoing are crimes. This is not true. Crimes are offences as defined by the Crimes Act. Police only investigate crimes which means that civil law actions are triggered by citizens and other organisations within our society. Police rarely (if at all) become involved in civil matters. And as you pointed out, the HSU will be pursuing Thomson in a civil case next year.
Lastly, you made the interesting comment that (according to Kathy Jackson), spending money on an authorised credit card was part of Thomson’s remuneration package. Personally, and for various reasons, I would have great difficulty accepting this. But I do concede this is an interesting proposition to say the least. Putting aside the fact it was something first suggested by Smith’s girlfriend, Kathy Jackson (herself facing potential criminal charges), it does at least raise the possibility that Thomson is not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing at all. The HSU system of internal controls must have been appalling, perhaps non-existent!!! But then, having appalling, even non-existent, internal controls is not, and never has been, a crime under the Crimes Act. And in this sense, deficient internal controls are no different to adultery – cheating on one’s spouse is not, and never has been, a crime under the Crimes Act either. Morally reprehensible, yes. But criminal, no. I admire Victorian County Court Judge Carolyn Douglas.
John M
What seems to be forgotten in this long running trial by media saga is the effort to set Craig Thomson up. The front page of the SMH several years ago featured a photo of a credit slip purporting to be from a brothel with the name Thomson spelt incorrectly & a driving licence photo of Thomson imbedded in it, an absurd situation. The SMH did not mention who paid the slip (if anyone) & withdrew the item from its website. This is a clear indication of a setup.
Unfortunately too many people remember this feature but do not know the problems associated with it.
The politics around Thomson fuelled by a precariously hung parliament were disgusting & hypocritical. The media continued with its own trial based on its inept investigations & reliance on Kathy Jackson.
The effect on Craig Thomson and his family can only be imagined. The outcome from the legal actions is far from satisfactory but Craig Thomson should now be given every chance to re establish himself.
What is the name of the man in the picture? Thanks Peter for keeping us up to date.
I too think that Jacksons talk of a credit card as part of a salary package is absolute rubbish and more to do with trying to set a defence for herself than helping out Thomson. I find it interesting that Thomson never claimed this if it were true.
My opinion is that Thomson made some bad choices regarding his use of the card, things that I’m sure in hindsight he would not do again. The question is did they add up to enough to create such a big deal out of, or is it along the lines of someone taking the toiletries when they check out of a hotel?
The total amount of less than $3K over 5 years is trivial, but who would have ever predicted a witch hunt of this scale due to a hung parliament?
I think Judge Douglas has done a stellar job under what must have been enormous pressure from the Victorian Police and the Victorian Dept Of Prosecutions, not to mention government pressure and media scrutiny
I thought Jackson was forced by her mental state to swan around in a private mental hospital – should someone so mentally fragile be allowed out in traffic???
Florence – I don’t know his name, but the man in the picture is a police chaplain on his way to support police officers involved in the Martin Place siege. Apparently Jackson and her boyfriend, Smith, were sitting outside a café when the chaplain walked past. Seems Jackson’s fiancé has been given the flick.
Would just like to amend my earlier comment to insert “entirely” before “satisfactory” if not to late. Others will have made more relevant comments in relation to court case & am happy for it not to be published if you think fit. I just get extremely annoyed when people are set out.
Not only that, JB but apparently Jeff Kennett has more or less told Michael Smith to”FLICK off”. What? Are the LNP dumping Smith and his mates? That’s a worry, with TURC expected to publish something tomorrow on its’ site…
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2014/12/my-interview-today-with-jeff-kennett-about-appointing-julia-gillard-to-the-board-of-beyond-blue.html
just a little curious as to the incorrect wording so the judge could give the verdict of Not Guilty stifling any further refiling of the charges.
Do you mean the dununciation?
It relates to the judge giving public condemnation over the charges, in a legal sentence that condemnation is his punishment and seeing as though the judge has already given it then his sentence is considered already served and so cannot be appealed by police.
If the judge wanted to find him guilty the could have changed the wording on all the other charges as she did on the 13, but she didn’t. She actually chose to do it on the charges which related to cash spending rather than credit card. The spending that there is no evidence of what it was on.
What a mess
Commandments, yes I know them, n now another can be added to them. Thow shall not STICH UP ANOTHER.
I am rather embarrassed to admit I got taken for a fool but more to the point I was a fool. I would like to say I never paid enough attention to what was going on, just that the sheer size of the whole thing with the relentless media assassination led me to believe he must be guilty of something.
I only started to pay attention with the unraveling of Jackson, then Craig’s curiously light sentence. Then I read Peter’s excellent and honest account of this and now I’m really stunned. Do Aust government scandals get any bigger than this?
I’ve been auspoling on twitter, having a go at the wingnuts and Michael Smith cc auspol and obviously fairfax is highly culpable. All the Prostitutes on tabloid TV confirming they had Craig as a customer??? Its rampant.! I do feel sorry for Craig and will try to vindicate myself through twitter, facebook.