After watching some of the news of Friday night, which included a section on the Craig Thomson arrest, I took to the tweets to express my anger at Tony Abbott’s posturing on the issue:
“I’d love it if we could finally call out @tonyabbottmhr on his ‘Government accepting Craig Thomson’s vote’ bullshit”.
It’s the most recent in a long run of tweets of mine; ones where I’ve had a go at the media for letting Tony Abbott get away with his crap (hey, I even wrote a blog post about it in relation to climate change). So, today, I’ve decided to stop complaining and do what I think our media should be doing; challenge Tony Abbott on what he’s been saying about Craig Thomson.
If you’ve followed the Thomson saga at all (I really haven’t been following it in depth) you would have heard Tony Abbott’s line. It goes something like “the Government is complicit, or illegitimate, as long as it ‘accepts’ Craig Thomson’s vote in Parliament.” The line has been used over and over again, and for me it shows that Abbott needs a basic lesson in Parliamentary democracy.
In a parliamentary system based on individual members representing individual districts, as far as I can tell, there is actually no way that a leader can decide to ‘accept’ or ‘not accept’ votes from a Member of Parliament (MP). As an elected MP, Craig Thomson has the same right as every other member to enter the House chamber and vote. Apart from the part of the constitution that determines that members are excluded from being in parliament if they receive a sentence of greater than one year in prison (correct me if I’m wrong on the details of that) there are no ways (as far as I know) for this right to be taken away. It is a basic democratic principle.
Another suggestion Abbott has had is that Thomson should excuse himself from voting until the matter is resolved, and it has been largely implied that Julia Gillard should play a role in ensuring this happens. This again seems to be a broad democratic overreach. Clearly that is a decision only for Thomson, and a Prime Minister stepping in to try and force that seems to set an awful democratic precedent.
What Abbott has been suggesting therefore is a process in which Julia Gillard uses rules that don’t exist to effectively remove a member who has been democratically elected. Anybody can see that as a massive overreach.
What about this idea though that Thomson has been propping the Government up through his votes? Well, in our parliamentary system there is in fact no ‘vote’ for the Government per se. Governments are formed in Australia by leaders proving to the Governor General that they can form a majority in the House, with whichever party that can do that then being sworn in. The only way this can be overturned is if there is a successful vote of no-confidence in a Government. There has been no vote for Government therefore, meaning there has been no time in which Craig Thomson’s vote has ‘propped the Government up’.
Given that we can’t take Thomson’s vote away therefore the only criticism I can see is that Gillard was using Thomson to boost her own leadership. But again that argument falls flat on its face when you look at the facts. There have only been two real instances when Thomson could have had an impact; the original challenge of the leadership against Kevin Rudd and then the leadership challenge in February last year. Given that there was no vote in the first instance, and that Gillard won by a whopping 40 votes in the second, you can’t really see Thomson having an impact here. The whole point is moot though now given that Thomson is no longer a member of the ALP and therefore doesn’t sit in caucus.
So what, I hear you say, Julia Gillard could have done what the Coalition rather embarrassingly did last year and take an MP out of the chamber every time there was a vote. Obviously, the first point here is that this misses a lot of the nature of our political system. What happens when both parties are on the same side of the aisle? Who steps out then? From what I can remember, Abbott wasn’t complaining when Thomson sat on the same side of the aisle of both parties during the asylum seeker debate for example.
More importantly though, this sets up a really troublesome precedent. What this idea basically does is allow parties to effectively remove representation for an entire electorate because they don’t like the acts of one MP. Even with his arrest now, Craig Thomson is still the representative for Dobell, and in doing so he deserves the right to have his vote cast so he can represent his district. Any removal of this vote is one that also removes the rights of his electorate.
They’re all pretty basic parliamentary principles really, but they’re ones that Abbott continues to trample. So you would think they would be ones that someone would have brought them up at some point. Unfortunately no. I’ve gone through and had a look at a number of press conferences and interviews of Tony Abbott’s over the past week, and the months during the height of the Thomson scandal last year (For reference, I’ve posted the links to the press conferences below. It’s a fun job, trust me). At no point can I find an example of the media challenging Abbott on his assumptions. In fact, sometimes they directly buy into them. Have a look at this exchange for example from last Friday (some of the text in the middle has been removed):
“There is a sense in which the Prime Minster owes all of these people. Every day that the Government accepts Craig Thomson’s vote is a demonstration that this Government is incapable of tackling the issue of union corruption.
…
QUESTION:
Mary Jo Fisher still voted after she had been charged with shoplifting. How is it any different?”
Whilst the question may sound relevant, it simply buys into Abbott’s ridiculous idea that someone can stop another MP from voting, and that that is a legitimate thing.
One can only surmise that Abbott and the media are completely ignorant of our political processes or that they are more than happy to continue to mislead/let the Leader of the Opposition mislead the community around such an important issue. Either way, it is a troubling situation.
All I can say is ‘a pox on both your houses’.
Abbott’s press conferences
28/08/2011 (Adelaide): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8277/Default.aspx
24/01/2012 (Sydney): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/Speeches/tabid/88/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8537/Default.aspx
26/04/2012 (Adelaide): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8688/Default.aspx
29/04/2012 (Sydney): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/PressReleases/tabid/86/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8693/Default.aspx
30/04/2012 (Interview with Michael Rowland): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8694/Default.aspx
12/05/2012 (Sydney): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8714/Default.aspx (In this conference, some journalists talk about setting a precedence of ‘disowning Thomson’s vote’, but none actually question the PM’s ability to do it).
23/05/2012 (Parliament House): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/Video/tabid/89/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8729/Default.aspx
30/05/2012 (Canberra): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8734/Default.aspx (This is after the Coalition almost got caught ’accepting’ Thomson’s vote.
24/10/2012 (Adelaide): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/ArticleType/ArticleView/ArticleID/8943/Default.aspx
1/02/2013 (Dunalley): http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/InterviewTranscripts/tabid/85/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/9054/Joint-Doorstop-Interview-Dunalley.aspx