Belly,

Look at the latest Fairfax poll where Labor's and Shortens dramatic slump shows that the Royal commission is very popular, and Abbott's accusation that Labor is running a "protection racket" for the unions is hitting home.

Shorten also comes with a lot of baggage, his background as a union heavy weight, and as a back stabber is not going to help him.

"WILL the royal commission into union corruption show the ALP has been partly funded by the proceeds of crime? Probably. This, for Tony Abbott, would be the cherry on top.

This story won’t be about the odd bad apple. This story will be about the apple orchard, how it is organised and where the distribution chain leads. So many apples end up in so many powerful places. We will see how that happens and who pays.

We will see how the union movement controls public policy through its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Australian Labor Party. We will get context around how Julia Gillard became prime minister and identify those who could have prevented it.

The infamous box of Slater & Gordon documents being fought over by Bruce Wilson and the Victoria Police in the Supreme Court will be accessed. We will be able to tell who is likely to be charged for the AWU scandal, both the original act and the cover-up. The money given by business to unions will be laid bare.

It is not illegal for executives to give money to unions, but we need to know what the business gets in return and how much that costs the rest of us. A class of professional enablers will be revealed; the people in law, finance and superannuation who help unions do dodgy deals. We will see how some union people sell us a story of the poor and powerless to make themselves rich and powerful. But, most important, we will see ALP-affiliated unions for what they are; a tax-exempt business empire, our very own legalised mafia, geared to feed cash and candidates to the Labor Party machine."

SM, Abbott has a trump card in his Royal Commission that is for sure. The danger is, if it not only throws plenty of dirt over the unions, which undoubtedly it will do, but if it also uncovers business complicity in the whole sordid affair, which is also a possibility.
The big winners over the life of this parliament may well be minor parties and independents. Abbott is looking at a souring economy, with rising unemployment, never a good thing for the government of the day. I think Labor is in for another torrid time with infighting and finger pointing.
Some may say, Paul1405 would say that as he is a Green and they are one of those minor parties that would benefit. Not necessarily, it could well be others like PUP, and who knows, that benefit from general disillusionment with the major parties.
Naturally, I detect some political bias in your above, but generally it’s a good post.
I'm not about to put the boot into Shorten, but well before the election I posted my thoughts on the bloke, so it’s not a case of me jumping onto the band wagon. Very difficult for anyone to take over as opposition leader after the party has been given the flick and later emerge as PM, takes an exceptional person to do that, Shorten in my view is not exceptional, but Labor have locked themselves in with him, through the Rudd convention.

Paul,

You are looking waaaaaay too small. Originally, TA was looking to re instate the BCC in which Shorten was instrumental in dismantling. Bill indicated that he intended to block this and TA outmaneuvered him by threatening a Royal commission with wide powers, and linking Bill and Labor with Union corruption "protection racket". Bill countered claiming the RC was waste of money and eventually proposed a much weaker alternative. It is now clear that Billy boy serious mis read the public mood.

Here is how I see a worst case scenario for Labor:

Firstly the RC runs for about a year. The damning recommendations come out implicating people in the unions business and labor. Prosecutions are recommended and prosecutions of those implicated incl present and former union and Labor MPs starts and continues through 2016 in the lead up to the elections.

Labor loses so badly that it almost loses the status as opposition in the house, and goes bankrupt.

Polls?
That Fairfax-Nielsen Poll was taken on a late shopping night, a Friday night and a hot Saturday from landlines only, which rules out nearly everyone under 28 and anyone who in summertime is out of the house drinking beer - like 90 percent of all single people.

It has a ‘margin of error’ of 2.6 percent - possibly putting Labor on 51.6 percent, pretty close to the 52 it scores on Morgan, the accurate one.

There have been previous polls that remain unpublished - probably because they don't support Abbott as much as the pollsters would like - particularly the Murdoch-owned Newspoll ones.

(The Liberal Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of New Limited?)

The real point of the polls is whatever happened to Abbott's "honeymoon?"

He should be riding high on a wave of euphoria but people are beginning to see that he doesn't have any plans for the future and all the previous alleged crises have been replaced with ones of his own making.

Rache,

You are one of my favourite left whingers. Please keep on believing that:

>Labor's policies are OK, and that they just need to sell them better,
>Labor lost because of the discord between Juliar and Dudd,

and all the other reasons for labor not to change, and the coalition will be in power for a decade or more.

Rache - Morgan "The accurate one"? You mean the one that says Labour will always win lol. All the other stuff you wrote is just fluff and nonsense, for goodness sake just go out on a Saturday/Friday night anyway.
Why worry, you are stuck with good Government until 2016 and only one election counts anyway.