Take a leaf out of the Beattie manual

Denying this damages the legitimacy of the government, and this government already has huge legitimacy issues courtesy of the broken carbon tax pledge.

In politics there is no principal that someone is "innocent until proven guilty" - that is a legal standard, which sounds a little twee and self-serving in any other context. The political standard was correctly set by Julius Caesar when he said that one must be "above reproach".

Similarly the right to remain silent might apply to police questioning or the courts, but it doesn't apply to the court of public opinion where adverse inferences are drawn all the time from failures to make public statements.

In using these sorts of defences the government sounds legalistic, dishonest and out of touch, not to mention tricky.

Still, they are better arguments than the "two wrongs don't make a right" fallacy as in "Well Mr Abbott did what we are doing when in government". Or the even less mature one of "they do it too" referring to a medically depressed opposition member who is facing court for $93 worth of shoplifting when your own man is accused in the hundreds of thousands.

The second lesson is once having identified the problem ensure it comes to a speedy and transparent resolution. Rather than hoping that the nurses union doesn't press charges, the police don't investigate and Fair Work Australia never comes to a conclusion this side of the next election, bring it on as quickly as possible.

You need to cauterise the haemorrhage, or apply a tourniquet as soon as possible. That means actively urging on the responsible investigators, and employing one of your own if needs be.

Apparently the Thomson issues were known before he was preselected, so why wasn't he vetted out? You don't need proof of criminality to decide that someone's history represents too great a risk. There's room for an internal inquiry into party structures here at the very least.

Possibly the government would behave differently if the loss of one seat didn't mean the potential loss of government. That is the third lesson from Beattie. You don't govern as though you have a majority of minus one or two, you govern as though you have just won in a landslide.

Governing any other way almost ensures you will lose.

Beattie didn't worry about being a minority government, and he wasn't afraid of an election. In fact he brought the election on seven months early.

This government lacks fortitude and that is one of its fundamental problems. It came to power with a limited agenda, has picked fights on too many fronts, and then modified policies in the face of opposition to the point where its victories are only Pyrrhic.