the problem is when parliamentary privilege is abused. in the end, parliamentary privilege was simply abused - he knew full damn well, that he was simply lying - and indeed, most of the labor party knew that he was lying, as most of them were not even in the chamber when he gave his lying speech.
in the end, and in court, thompson did not even try and defend himself - but accepted the allegations against himself, but tried to argue, that he was entitled to the expenditure.
forget thompson - but there must be plenty of circumstances where parliamentary privilege is a good thing - otherwise MP's would be too scared to say anything, otherwise people with money would be suing them - and people with money, sue, even if they are in the wrong (but keep it hidden)
