gillard hits back at abbott

Exerpt from an ABC Online article today...

In a feisty performance today, Ms Gillard said Mr Abbott should afford Mr Thomson the presumption of innocence until investigations into the matter were concluded, and was angry at the focus on her backbencher when Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher faced criminal charges for shoplifting.

She says Mr Abbott knew about criminal charges against Senator Fisher but did not mention them until he was asked.

"The Liberal Party sinks in its stinking hole of mud and hypocrisy; hypocrisy that is fuelled by their political interests," she said.

"They don't care about anything else; not about jobs, not about health, not about education, not about the economy, not about anything else - except one job and that's a job for the Leader of the Opposition.

"He [Mr Abbott] is mired in hypocrisy in that when in government he was the first one as leader of government business to get to this dispatch box to defend Liberal members who were in various scrapes and to say that they should be extended the presumption of innocence and that people should not act or draw conclusions."

The Prime Minister also sought to turn the tables on the Coalition when questioned about her role in a decision by the NSW branch of the ALP to pay Mr Thomson's legal fees following an aborted defamation action against Fairfax newspapers.

She quoted a statement from the director of the Victorian Liberal Party in May, in which the director dismissed criticism of a payment the party made to a state MP involved in a defamation case.

Ms Gillard says it is apparently OK for the Liberal Party to pay defamation expenses for a member.

Mr Abbott called the Prime Minister's approach to Question Time a graceless performance.

"We have had an extraordinary display from the Prime Minister today; a bristling, petulant performance from the Prime Minister, somehow trying to insist that George Brandis of all people has questions to answer, that the shadow attorney-general in some way has serious questions to answer and serious statements to make on the subject of improper behaviour and somehow the Member for Dobell has not," he said.

This morning Ms Gillard said she was "deeply concerned" about the conduct of Senator Brandis in contacting the NSW Police Minister.

"Our system of democracy, our system of government relies on the fact that office bearers like police commissioners, independently of political processes, exercise their best judgment," she said.

Dave R.