Be Responsible – Be Free!

Twelve months. With nine of them suspended. What a bloody joke.

At long, long last, corrupt former union official and Labor MHR Craig Thomson, the man onto whose vote the Gillard government clung by its fingernails, was today sentenced in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. He will spend a dozen weeks in a country-club minimum-security facility, then be set free. Instead of the ten years in Her Majesty’s Iron Motel, which his crimes self-evidently warranted. And which he would undoubtedly have got, had he been a nobody with no influence.

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I feel like a bit of a semantic quibble today. It concerns the term “right-wing”.

As most of you are probably already aware, the terms “left-wing” and “right-wing” have their origins in the États Généraux, the old French Legislative Assembly, back in the days of the Revolution of the late 18^th century. The revolutionaries, or republicans, generally of the Third Estate, sat on the left of the Chair, while the monarchists, clerics and other traditionalists were on the right. As I understand it, to prevent debate being interrupted, the more extreme one’s views, generally the further from the chair one was seated; hence centre-right, far-right, and so on.

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This week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the long-promised Royal Commission into union corruption. Its terms of reference—initially confined to a small number of unions and designed primarily to shine a light on the activities of the Australian Workers Union in the 1990s, its officials and legal representation—have been broadened to include any “registered organization” under the 2009 Fair Work Act, and any legal entity associated with them.

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