Crikey has a code of conduct. We developed it last year to support the industry code of ethics we’re already bound by as members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a professional alliance without one. Any self-respecting business has them. And, as Bernard Keane notes today, most state parliaments have them, too:
“New South Wales, Queensland, WA, Tasmania, Victoria, the Northern Territory and ACT parliaments all have codes for MPs (in Tasmania, for government MPs only), which are additional to, or include, ministerial codes of conduct …”
Ministers in Canberra are bound by a code, but other MPs aren’t. Julia Gillard said yesterday she wants to consider one — more than 18 months after all sides of politics agreed to a document as part of the parliamentary reforms pushed by the Greens and independents.
The Coalition is right on one thing: you don’t need a document to tell you not to use the company credit card to pay for hookers. Allegedly. Or to make government increasingly dysfunctional while hanging on with grim death to your parliamentary seat spouting laughably implausible excuses. Allegedly.
But some lines need to be drawn on when the right time is to go. To not even mention, as Keane does, the myriad other anomalies around behaviour, personal conflict and treatment of staff.
Craig Thomson isn’t why federal politicians need a code of conduct, though if there’s any good from the whole sordid affair that may be it. They need a code so we have something to hold them to in the face of slippery excuses and tenuous justifications.
Hell, it might even introduce a shred of dignity into the place.
So Crikey, you have now joined the crowd who want to play judge and jury on Thomson – you are as bad as the Coalition. The “laughably implausible excuses” may come back to bite you. As I understand what the accused in this instance has said – he has witnesses to the statement that someone threatened him with hookers etc. etc.
Like everyone else, I am horrified about what has been going on in the HSU, but for goodness sake, why doesn’t the media (including you) just wait until this whole saga plays out through the judicial system? There may well be others who are responsible for what has happened, and this may lessen or vindicate Thomson’s “guilt”. No one can say with any certainty what the truth is at present.
Presumed innocent until proven guilty, anyone? Remember that FWA is NOT a judicial organisation.
Yes CML.
The other thing is ‘all this talk’ may well, in a judge’s view, prejudice any chance of a fair trial should it come to that. Just think, if Abbott, Pyne and Brandis’ histrionics secure the acquittal.
Thanks Crickey, too much evidence to allow him off, next he will races it up to the High Court protesting and taking 8 – 10 years.
@SB: I think you need to be looking at a different kind of sentence.
As for a code of conduct for federal members, the Coalition had ample time before this government, and equally sorry examples, to prompt it into introducing it. Just another example of Tony Abbott’s hypocrisy.
And it all started out with Kathy Jackson setting out to get revenge against her hubby by accusing him of using hookers on the credit card.