Here’s one for the “meaningless declarations of support” box.

Federal MP Craig Thomson has been accused of using his corporate credit card to pay for escort services and his campaign in the marginal federal seat of Dobell and of making more than $100,000 worth of cash advances over a five year period when he was national secretary of the Health Services Union.  He has denied the allegations.

His girlfriend, Zoe Arnold, is standing by him, declaring:

"I stand behind Craig 100 per cent and he will be strenuously denying all allegations,"

Right, as if he’s going to tell her if he was actually going to prostitutes on the union tab, or at all for that matter.  OK, points for loyalty, love and support of her partner, but I’d suggest hardly an unbiased, or fully informed declaration of support.

And what is it with these Labor folk?  Mr Thomson and Ms Arnold met while he was a union official and she a staffer to former NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher.  Ms Arnold is expecting the couple’s first child later this year.  Don’t these people have outside social lives?  How often do you see couples with both partners working inside the ALP and its associated union machinery?  For fuck’s sake, the inbreeding is as bad as with Hollywood celebrities, or Tasmanians.  If they keep all the internal party interbreeding up, the ALP will mutate itself into some sort of genetic mutant freak club.  Cue the banjos.

And in an amazing coincidence, another ALP figure has also been accused of spending union money on prostitutes.  And even more amazingly, at the same brothel as Mr Thomson was alleged to have used his card at.  Maybe they enjoyed a threesome?

The second instance involves Mr Jeff Jackson, also from the Health Services Union and a prominent figure in the Victorian ALP.  As secretary of the Health Services Union’s number 1 branch in Victoria, Mr Jackson has been embroiled in a bitter power struggle with branch president Pauline Fegan. Ms Fegan last night called on him to resign over the emergence of credit card statements showing the payments to ‘Keywed Pty Ltd" – which takes money for clients of the Sydney Outcalls escort agency. There is apparently a nasty battle for power in Mr Jackson’s HSU No1 branch as he fights to win control from union president Pauline Fegan.  Mr Jackson and Ms Fegan have been brawling for weeks, making claim and counter-claim against each other about alleged misuse of union funds.  This brawl has sucked in Mr Thomson and potentially threatens other Labor figures.

Now to reinforce my point above about the weird and wonderful interwoven relationships in the ALP, cop this.  I couldn’t make this up – it is just so bizarre.  The allegations against Mr Thomson were first detailed in a leaked letter written by Kathy Jackson, the HSU’s national secretary and head of the union’s No2 branch. She is Mr Jackson’s ex-wife. But there’s more – her new partner is Michael Lawler, a vice-president of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, whose industrial registrar is investigating Mr Thomson.

Sweet isn’t it, these happy family games.