Suspended Labor MP Craig Thomson has resigned from the party, and says he will seek re-election as an independent.
He says he will contest the coming election in the New South Wales seat of Dobell, the seat he held for Labor.
However the Mr Thomson is once again shrouded in controversy, amid claims that he rejected an offer from Labor to allow him to be beaten in a federal party pre-selection contest.
Media reports say Mr Thomson says the New South Wales ALP offered to allow him to contest Labor pre-selection for his seat, presuming he would lose, so that he could effectively qualify for a lucrative redundancy.
Labor has denied the accusation but the federal opposition says it's referred the claims to the Australian Federal Police.
Thea Cowie reports.
Federal Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis says he's written to the Australian Federal Police commissioner Tony Negus seeking an investigation as a matter of urgency.
Senator Brandis says if the claims are correct, Labor officials may have breached the Criminal Code and the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
He wants Mr Thomson - and New South Wales Labor to make detailed public explanations.
Senator Brandis says Mr Thomsons' claims are very serious indeed.
"The opposition has certainly questioned Mr Thomson's credibility on a wide range of matters in relation to the Health Services Union. But nevertheless Mr Thomson has made an allegation against the NSW branch of the Labor Party and unnamed individuals in it. Now that allegation is either true or false but it requires to be investigated to determine whether it's true or false and whether a crime has been committed. It's for that reason that this morning I wrote to Mr Negus, the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, asking him to investigate the matter urgently."
New South Wales Labor secretary Sam Dastyari says if Mr Thomson had tried to nominate while a suspended member of the Labor Party, his nomination would have been rejected.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard isn't saying much either.
"Journalist: Are you disappointed Craig Thomson is quitting the Labor Party and running as an independent? Gillard: Mr Thomson was suspended from the Labor Party quite some time back. Journalist: Will it make it harder to win back the seat? Gillard: Well Mr Thomson was suspended quite some time back."
The opposition moved a motion in parliament to compel Mr Thomson to say who in the Labor Party allegedly attempted to make the deal with him but the motion failed.
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus is dismissing it all as a pre-election stunt.
"My response to Senator Brandis on writing to the AFP and immediately releasing it to the media is the same as I've said previously about Senator Brandis with stunts like that. They are a stunt. It's an abuse of the right of any citizen to complain to the police. Every citizen in Australia has the right to take a matter to the police but what they don't have is the right to release it to the media and make a stunt out of it."
Mr Thomson is sticking by the claims.
He says he rejected the Labor Party's offer and has finally ended his long association with the Australian Labor Party.
Mr Thomson was suspended from the Labor party in May last year while he was under investigation by Fair Work Australia.
In January this year he was charged with more than 150 counts of fraudulently using his union credit card, in part to pay for prostitutes.
Mr Thomson says he'll be running as an independent because his values no longer align with Labor's.
"The Labor Party that I joined isn't the Labor Party today. Of course I hold many of the same values and principles that the Labor Party do and I always will. It's just that I think I have a better way of trying to pursue those values by being an independent rather than the direction that the party is taking at the moment. "
Mr Thomson is expected to appear before Court on the fraud allegations in Canberra next week.
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