http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/thomson-denies-alp-encour...

Craig Thomson says he does not feel the ALP’s NSW general secretary Sam Dastyari was trying to ‘‘induce’’ him to stand for Labor preselection in Dobell when the two met last week.

The embattled MP’s denials come in response to reports claiming that the ALP had suggested that Mr Thomson should stand for Labor preselection in his seat on the basis that he would qualify for a redundancy payment if he failed.

Mr Thomson, who announced on Thursday he would stand as an independent at the federal election, said he met Mr Dastyari last week.

During the meeting, Mr Thomson says he told Mr Dastyari that he would not stand for the Labor Party. Mr Thomson was suspended from the ALP last year over allegations he misused union funds, but says it had been his decision to quit the party.

‘‘We had a quick discussion about that and in that context [Mr Dastyari] said if you’re not looking at running, the issues with redundancy come up,’’ he told Fairfax Media’s Breaking Politics program.

According to Mr Thomson, this included his entitlements if he was beaten in a preselection or if he was defeated at the election.

‘‘Sam made it clear that if I wanted to stand for preselection I could do so, and if the party didn’t preselect me, I would be entitled to redundancy,’’ he said.

But the independent MP, who is facing civil and criminal charges, said there was nothing ‘‘sinister’’ about the discussion.

‘‘I didn’t feel in any sense that Sam was trying to induce me to take a particular course of action, he was advising me as to what I [would] be entitled to under different circumstances.’’

Mr Thomson later added: ‘‘But Sam was also, I think, trying to persuade me not to stand as an independent.’’

On Thursday, Mr Dastyari contradicted this account with the tweet: ‘‘Craig Thomson’s membership of the Labor Party was suspended a year ago. You can’t contest a preselection if you are suspended.’’

He also told Fairfax Media that Mr Thomson’s account did not make any sense.

Brandis writes to AFP
On Thursday morning, the government blocked an opposition attempt to force Mr Thomson to make a statement to Parliament over a News Ltd report that the ALP offered him an ‘‘inducement’’ to retire from his seat.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis later said he had written to Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus on Thursday asking him to investigate the matter.

Senator Brandis referred specifically to a claim reported in a News Ltd newspaper that Mr Thomson ‘‘rejected an offer from the NSW Labor Party to allow him to be beaten in a Labor preselection contest – a move which would have qualified him for the politician’s equivalent of a six-month redundancy worth up to $100,000’’.

Senator Brandis said that if this was true, then a person or persons within the ALP had sought to induce Mr Thomson to undergo a ‘‘sham preselection process for the purpose of fraudulently increasing his severance entitlements’’.

Senator Brandis suggested that this breached sections of the Criminal Code and Commonwealth Electoral Acts.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accused Senator Brandis of a stunt by releasing the letter to the AFP.

‘‘It’s an abuse of the right of any citizen to complain to the police,’’ he told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Dreyfus said any person had the right to lodge a complaint: ‘‘What they don’t do is have the right to release it to the media and make a stunt out of it.’’

‘‘There’s no material advantage in either of those things,’’ he said before insisting that the money was not much of a consideration for him.

‘‘The money, all those options, haven’t been much of a consideration, which is why I went through with what happened with Sam Dastyari,  they are not the motivations for me in terms of this.’’