Believe him or not, #Thomson rises to occasion

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Darin Sullivan in Main

It’s not often you can sit in Parliament for an hour, listening, and be totally captivated.
But so it was from noon to one o’clock this afternoon as the member for Dobell, Craig Thomson, delivered his feisty defence from the crossbench, the purgatory to which he has been relegated by the Gillard government ever since it realised his continued presence in government would cause it too much hurt, but his absence from Parliament altogether would cause even more.
Whether or not you believed him, it was a brilliant performance.
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Thomson reeled in his audience quickly at the start by quoting from the threatening emails and phone calls he had received – charming anonymous types urging him to slash his wrists and the like.
He had our attention. He used it to tell us that he denied all allegations against him. He took us through his work history – even talking about himself in the third person as ‘‘the young industrial officer’’ who, bright-eyed and eager, began work at a union.