Aren’t our new standards of political propriety excellent? Now MPs have to stop doing their core duties, a kind of leave-with-pay, if there’s any investigation of any past matter related to them.

That, after all, is the standard Craig Thomson has been forced to set — not yet charged with anything, merely a figure in a broader investigation by Fair Work Australia of the use of union funds before he became an MP, but nonetheless he’s resigned his position as chair of the reps economics committee.

In contrast, Senator Mary Jo Fisher, who has been arrested and charged with shoplifting and assault while she was a serving member of Parliament, has merely “stood aside” from her committee work. That’s a rather strange double standard, given Thomson hasn’t been charged with anything and what is under investigation relates to a matter before he entered Parliament.

In actual fact, under any commonsense approach, Fisher’s action was the right one — she’s been charged, she’s stood aside pending the outcome, if she’s found not guilty she can resume her responsibilities, no problem. That’s what Neville Wran did in the face of the ABC’s confection of corruption claims, which Wran referred to a Royal Commission, in 1983.

But we’re way past sensible now and rapidly coming up on the territory marked “mutually assured destruction”. Once parties get a whiff of blood, they very quickly lose any capacity to consider just what sort of problems they’re storing up for themselves later on.

Sometimes the storage period is only a matter of days. Remember poor Ian Campbell, a reasonable and intelligent environment minister — his commitment to saving the orange-bellied parrot was particularly commendable — forced to walk the plank by John Howard because he had committed the gross impropriety of having a brief meeting with Brian Burke.

This wouldn’t have otherwise been a problem, except that it only emerged after Howard, desperate to lay a glove on Kevin Rudd, had thundered that anyone meeting with Burke, as Rudd had, was unfit for high office. It was indicative of Howard’s luck at that stage that that particular missile went wide of its target and circled back, Warner Bros cartoon-style, to plunge straight into his own ranks.

Not merely has the Opposition set a new standard for propriety, it has paved the way for interference in the affairs of independent agencies. Michael Ronaldson demanded government somehow intervene on “this dragged-out Fair Work Australia investigation” into the Health Services Union. The establishing legislation for Fair Work Australia gives the body independence — its “President is not subject to direction by or on behalf of the Commonwealth”, reads s.583 — but that’s a minor point when your blood is up and government is almost within reach. In any case, Ronaldson claims the government has routinely been interfering in the operations of Fair Work Australia, albeit without any evidence.

For a few months, it seemed as though stability would prevail in federal politics, and Tony Abbott’s hitherto-successful wrecking strategy fell somewhat into abeyance. But the issues around Craig Thomson and his poor judgment, however far that extends beyond straight stupidity, have given the Coalition a sniff of government again. Accordingly, an already unhealthy political atmosphere is becoming more rancorous and febrile, with all thought of future consequences going out the window.

The Opposition’s complete abandonment today of the convention of pairs — for Simon Crean and Malcolm Turnbull to attend Margaret Olley’s memorial service, for goodness sake — is of a piece with much of its behaviour since the election, but takes us still closer to the sort of superheated atmosphere of 1975, the last time the Coalition comprehensively abandoned convention and tradition in the quest for government.

Labor has no alternative but to respond in kind, tactically and strategically.

The problem with the Coalition’s victory in 1975, however, was that it cruelled Malcolm Fraser’s prime ministership, giving an air of illegitimacy to what would have otherwise been, with time and patience, a comprehensive and deserved routing of Labor, and leaving a gaping hole in Australia’s social and political fabric. At least back then, in Fraser and Whitlam, we had two political giants slugging it out. This time around we have, to steal Laurie Oakes’ apt phrase, two political pygmies, neither of whom the electorate appears to have the time of day for.

With every day that the temperature goes up, the rhetoric in question time becomes grubbier, the allegations grow wilder, the demands get stronger, and the rallies outside and the froth-mouthed talkback rhetoric become angrier. Conventional politics is giving way to the law of the jungle. If it keeps up, it’ll end in tears, and they won’t all be Labor’s.

The ABC’s Jonathan Holmes has responded after publication:

Bernard Keane writes this morning: ‘That’s what Neville Wran did in the face of the ABC’s confection of corruption claims, which Wran referred to a Royal Commission, in 1983.’

I can’t let that pass without comment.  The ABC confected nothing.  In “The Big League”, 4 Corners accurately reported that, prior to the committal hearing into a fraud charge brought against the secretary of a NRL club, a serving magistrate had been told by the Chief Magistrate of NSW that ‘the Premier wants the case dismissed’.  The case was indeed dismissed.

The subsequent Royal Commission found that all those things had happened precisely as reported.   Kevin Humphreys was recommitted for trial and found guilty.  Murray Farquhar, the Chief Magistrate, went to gaol for perverting the course of justice.  Some ‘confection’.

Of course, the Royal Commissioner, Sir Laurence Street, also found that Farquhar had ‘confected’ his claim that the Premier had anything to do with it.  Street entirely exonerated Neville Wran.  But he had the benefit of a Royal Commissioner’s powers.  4 Corners could not prove that the Premier was involved, or that he wasn’t.  But our sources, including two senior magistrates, all believed (wrongly, as it turned out) that he probably was.  I am still at a loss to know how we could have reported a matter which was tearing apart the morale of the NSW magistracy, without naming, and in the process defaming, the Premier.

I was the Executive Producer of 4 Corners at the time.  ‘The Big League’ is still one of the programs I’m proudest of.