Federal Labor MP Craig Thomson, and his wife, radio newsreader Zoe Arnold, welcomed their second daughter on October 13, named Adelaide. Adelaide Thomson joins big sister Matilda, aged 2.

Craig has had a career as a talented union leader, and was elected to the seat of Dobell, in New South Wales, in 2007. Zoe is a radio newsreader on Sea FM, on the Central Coast, currently on leave. She was a media adviser to former New South Wales Health Minister John Della Bosca, until he resigned after becoming embroiled in a sex scandal. Craig and Zoe were married in January this year.

Craig Thomson is currently facing four separate enquiries that he misappropriated union funds for his own benefit, and used his union-paid credit card to pay for escort services before he entered Parliament. He is under investigation by The NSW and Victorian police, Fair Work Australia, and the NSW Department for Fair Trading. The scandal leaves the Gillard government in a very vulnerable position if Craig Thomson has to leave his seat, hence the close media scrutiny.

The birth of Adelaide must come as a rare piece of good news for the MP who always seem to have “embattled” before his name in the headlines, and he also gets a week off Parliament to spend with his new daughter. Matilda and Adelaide make a very patriotic sibset.

(Photo from the Herald Sun, August 25 2011; photo shows Zoe, Craig and Matilda)