Serial fraudster Craig Thomson, a former federal Labor MP, is facing the prospect of jail, having entered a guilty plea to submitting false and misleading documents to immigration officials, including submitting a document he knew had been forged.
In 2009, the Herald first revealed that Thomson, the former national secretary of the Health Services Union, had used his union credit card to pay $6000 for the services of sex workers. He had also withdrawn more than $100,000 in cash and bankrolled his 2007 election campaign for the central coast seat of Dobell.
Former federal Labor MP Craig Thomson outside court in 2023.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Thomson sued the Herald for defamation over the story, but dropped the case in 2011 when further overwhelming evidence emerged, including that his driver’s licence number and signature were on credit card vouchers issued by a Surry Hills escort agency.
Thomson’s mobile phone records also showed two calls had been made to numbers associated with the agency and that someone using his phone was making calls on the drive from his Bateau Bay home on the Central Coast to Sydney on the date the union’s credit card was used at the brothel. A short time later, the same phone was used to call union officials, including HSU boss Michael Williamson.
Thomson did not have the funds to pay Fairfax Media’s costs of $240,000 plus another $100,000 of his own costs. With Labor in a minority government and bankrupts unable to sit in parliament, the NSW Labor Party’s then-boss Sam Dastyari organised for the party to pay Thomson’s legal debts.
Thomson promptly emailed friends and federal party colleagues claiming victory over Fairfax Media.
Craig Thomson in Parliament House, Canberra, in August 2011. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax
But Fair Work Australia (FWA) was also investigating the allegations against Thomson for rorting his credit card.
In April 2011, while on a $24,000 taxpayer-funded overseas study trip, the findings of which he plagiarised in his report to parliament, Thomson phoned FWA from his Paris hotel to inform investigators that Fairfax Media had settled the defamation case.
