Another day, another 24 hours of silence from the south of France where dot.com hotshot, turned Victorian Legislative Councilor, turned electric car aficionado Evan Thornley is holed up avoiding questions from the media over his post-politics career.

To recap, speculation is rife that Thornley is on the verge of snaffling a $700,000 gig as local CEO of Better Place, a US car battery swapping firm, just days after resigning from the Victorian upper house. The stench surrounding Thornley now appears all enveloping and is shaping as another example of an Australian politician using contacts gained in office to feather his own post-politics bed.

If he were a federal minister, Thornley would be in clear breach of Kevin Rudd’s code of conduct that would have shelved the Better Place appointment for 12 months. But Victoria is yet to adopt a similar code and notwithstanding pangs from his conscience, Thornley is free to use inside information gleaned on the public purse without feeling any legal heat.

The excuses raised by the Victorian Government fail to hold water. One spokesperson claimed that debate over a ministerial code was irrelevant because Thornley wasn’t a cabinet member. This completely ignores the fact Thornley served on several cabinet committees and had exclusive access to cabinet submissions.

According to corporate governance expert Stephen Bartos, it is now imperative that Victoria adopt a code similar to that introduced in NSW way back in 1998.

Bartos told Crikey the central question in the Thornley case was whether or not he was involved in any decision-making process that may have shaped Better Place’s future prospects. Thornley was intimately involved in CEO Shai Agassi’s Down Under charm offensive, and would have had input into John Brumby’s decision to back the firm. In March, he held talks in Israel with a group of tech moguls linked to Agassi.

In the United States, members of the executive are prohibited from taking up employment for a year, or life, depending on the circumstances. Granted, executive appointees aren’t members of the legislature but the point remains — these are simple measures that a mature democracy should embrace without complaint.

The move is just the latest in a series of mind-melting transitions that include Steve Bracks’ crowning as a KPMG adviser just months after leaving office and Bob Carr curling up with the millionaires at Macquarie Bank. On the other side of politics Peter Reith made the move from Defence Minster to defence contractor Tenix, Michael Wooldridge headed up the Royal College of GPs after earlier handing them a $5 million grant and Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Larry Anthony joined the board of ABC Learning five months after losing his federal seat.

The point is that even hallowed McKinseyites like Thornley, in true Eddie McGuire style, don’t appear to get the idea that profiting from public office, or even the appearance of profiting, is in any way morally fraught.

Of course, this suits Thornley’s Third Way agenda that collapses meaningful distinctions between the public and private spheres in the name of efficiency and ‘getting things done’. If the Victorian opposition are in any way serious about claiming power in 2010 they could do worse than to focus their attention on the unfolding Thornley saga. On first impression, this scandal has the potential to run for months — much longer than one of Agassi’s electric batteries.