Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk appears to prefer to risk a by-election in Cook rather than have an unpredictable Independent, Billy Gordon, who was dumped by the ALP for not disclosing to the party his prior convictions and the domestic violence order against him.

Labor was right to dump him. But there is no legal reason for him to resign from Parliament. The convictions are old and he has served his punishment. The law requires a resignation only if a sitting member is convicted after election of an offence punishable by a year or more’s jail. The MP is has to go, even if no custodial sentence is ultimately imposed.

We should not be surprised if Gordon stays on. The salary of $165,000 a year is a good one. If he does, do not expect him to vote in any no-confidence motion against Labor. And the Katter’s Australian Party has indicated that it is not in the business of turfing out governments without good reason.

So do not expect the Government to change.

As to the question whether Labor should “accept” his vote, the notion is wrong-headed. It is not for Labor to accept or reject any MP’s vote. MPs just vote and the resolution before the Parliament is passed or fails accordingly. The notion was first invented by the Coalition when Federal Labor needed the vote of an MP it had expelled -- Craig Thomson – to get legislation through the House of Representatives.

The Coalition argued that one ALP MP should refrain from voting – to “pair” with Thomson and nullify his vote. But why should a random ALP MP be denied the right to vote on behalf of his or her constituents?

In any event, Labor would much prefer one of its own in the seat of Cook – someone who would have to toe the party line. This is because if Gordon abstained or voted against legislation for any reason, there would be a chance that the legislation would not pass which would be frustrating, but not fatal.

As to why Labor got into this position, it comes down to Gordon’s lack of probity in failing to disclose his past. The ALP does police checks – presumably with consent -- on potential candidates, so it is not the party’s fault, although its information networks clearly need improving.

The trouble is that domestic-violence orders do not come up because they are merely allegations and apprehensions, not convictions. Also, the convictions are quite old, before these days of massive data storage. Stuff just got lost when translating from paper to computer or from one computer system to another in a way that simply does not happen (or very rarely happens) in these days of secure data transfer and zigabytes of storage.

One might ask how long should an old conviction be brought up. Surely, there comes a time when a person can put the past behind them without a youthful transgression haunting them for life. Well, yes and no. For some jobs past convictions, even serious convictions, should not matter. But for others, some convictions, however old, do matter – lawyers and child-care workers come to mind. Also, with MPs, voters are entitled to know if a candidate has a serious past conviction.

Palaszczuk’s desire for Gordon to leave Parliament and have a by-election carries risks, even though Labor has won Cook every time but in two huge landslides to the conservatives in the past 40 years.

The risk is that some voters might blame Labor for this debacle and they might vote for the LNP to ensure it does not happen again.

More significantly, though, is the question of Palaszczuk’s own handling of the matter. We know emails were sent to her office about the domestic violence allegations some days before she made the matters public and ordered Gordon out of the party.

The question to be asked in any by-election is the same one that was asked of Richard Nixon: what did she know and when did she know it?