Craig Thomson:

Matthew Brennan writes: Re. “Thomson completes transformation of politics into prime-time drama” (yesterday, item 1). On one level I find the outrage by your correspondents about Craig Thomson being tried in the court of public opinion superficially reasonable but on deeper thought it becomes really precious.

Yes it is a disgrace that Thomson is forced to defend his innocence in Parliament but in that process hasn’t Thomson himself used parliamentary privilege to allege that he is the victim of serious criminal behaviour by other people? If he believes this to be, so why hasn’t he gone to the police and gotten them to investigate?

And the investigations against Thomson have dragged on now for nearly three years. Why? If the man had no case to answer then surely it would not have taken Fair Work Australia very long to return a “no case to answer” finding. And as it was the HSU who was allegedly diddled, and as no one seems to have successfully contested that the credit card statements obtained by the Fairfax Press were fabrications, why, instead of sitting around and letting Fair Work Australia fart around for three years, hasn’t the HSU taken matters into its own hands and sued to recover the money?

Sorry but in “ordinary person in street land” the stench in this affair increasingly arises from the perception that everybody involved actually don’t want the claims against Thomson tested in a court of law. And it doesn’t require a particularly high level of cynicism to work out why.

Ken Lambert writes: Julia Gillard thinks she is smart but not smart enough to grasp that her protection of Craig Thomson is the last straw that will surely bring federal Labor a cataclysmic defeat at the hands of the Australian voter.

Any right-thinking person witnessing the Thomson speech, could only marvel at the audacity of this apology for a man. A 1000-page report by Fair Work Australia was not evidence: “none of this was done by me,” “I was framed by other grubs at the HSU,” “my phone was cloned” etc. Deny, deny, deny, lie, lie, lie. The biggest lie, oft repeated will be believed by some gullible portion of the populace.

And the ABC even reported some of the feeble minded in the Dobell RSL as opining that Thomson should be given the benefit of the doubt he had just created with his preposterous defence of the indefensible.

Patricia O’Donnell writes: It really is a new low. Psychological torture as blood sport. Not only do we demand the stocks; we also demand the confession or exculpation. And then we want the score: how well did he do? How often did he cry?  Please tell me that this is all for more than political point scoring.

Please assure me that there is a sufficient and real public interest purpose to justify flaying someone alive, day after day in public. Or, at least, please tell me that at least some of us are ashamed.

Clive Palmer:

Shirley Colless writes: Re. Yesterday’s editorial. Oh dear, elections being somewhere around the next corner or two, Clive Palmer, like Joe Hockey in North Sydney, is proclaiming himself as the Yellow Peril.

John Taylor writes: Clive Palmer will turn out to be the Christopher Skase of the 21st century. You heard it here first.