Heat builds on MP and Gillard

Prime Minister Julia Gillard's fragile minority Government is nudging closer to a train wreck as pressure mounts on a Wellington-born MP whose alleged misuse of a union credit card could bring Labor down.

Craig Thomson now faces investigation by the New South Wales police and a national workplace relations tribunal Fair Work Australia over allegations that he hired prostitutes using the card when he was president of the Health Services Union.

The union, which commissioned an independent audit of its financial affairs under Thomson's presidency, has said it will hand all relevant documents to the police.

The Opposition's relentless attack has forced Thomson to quit as chairman of the House economics committee - although he remains a member - and is overshadowing Gillard's attempt to pull Labor from a morass that even before the scandal was dragging the Government towards oblivion.

Thomson denies the allegations, which relate to his time with the union before entering Parliament.

This week's Newspoll in the Australian underwrote both the disaster looming above Gillard and the potential for Thomson to bring it crashing down.

The poll said Labor's primary vote was at a record low of 27 per cent, well behind the Coalition's 47 per cent.

On the two-party preferred vote that decides Australian elections, the Coalition leads by 57 per cent to 43 per cent.

If Thomson was convicted of a crime carrying a jail term of 12 months or more, he could be forced from Parliament. Even if his guilt was established but he escaped eviction from the House, he would be a severe liability for Gillard.

If Thomson was removed from Parliament or forced to quit, the Government would almost certainly lose his central NSW seat of Dobell, wiping out its one-vote majority and triggering Labor's collapse.

For the moment Gillard is resolutely backing Thomson, defending his refusal to make a statement on the allegations to Parliament and invoking the defence that investigations are under way and that Thomson is entitled to due process.

She has also tried to turn the attack on the Opposition by citing the theft and assault charges laid against Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher after an incident in an Adelaide supermarket last year.

Fisher has yet to face trial but has said she will defend the charges.

Gillard said yesterday that Fisher was the only person in Parliament at present facing criminal charges and had not been asked by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to explain herself to Parliament, as Abbott was demanding of Thomson.

"No statements have been made by that Liberal senator and indeed no statement called for," she said.

"There are proper processes here and they need to be gone through."

Government MPs have also pointed back to the scandals that plagued former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard's Administration. Seven ministers resigned over a range of scandals in its early years. None quit Parliament.

The union's national secretary, Kathy Jackson, told ABC TV's Lateline programme that the union had first become aware of possible financial irregularities in 2008 and had commissioned an independent investigation.