ABC NewsRadio asked the following in an online poll: "Justice Dyson Heydon has decided to stay on as head of the trade union royal commission; has he made the right call?"

The average vote numbers for the previous 40 polls was 336 votes. But for this one, 5238 people voted. The result was equally emphatic. A resounding 72 per cent agreed Heydon had made the right call.

It was a landslide rejection of Shorten's disdain for the royal commissioner, of Labor's campaign against Heydon, of the unions' legal actions and threats, and of the media's hyperventilation about the royal commission’s integrity.

It's not as if ABC NewsRadio's audience is a hotbed of right-wing reactionaries. When recently asked: "Do you believe the federal government can recover from its current slump in national opinion polls?" a massive majority, 72 per cent, responded "No" (370 votes counted). An even more resounding majority, 77 per cent, voted "Yes" to: "Should a coal mining project promising 10,000 new jobs be stopped on environmental grounds?" (333 votes).

But nothing touched a collective nerve like the Dyson Heydon saga. No other subject came remotely close to mobilising votes. People know a witch-hunt when they see one. They don't like smearing, bullying or pack attacks. The Dyson Heydon saga was all of these things. Despite the constant claims his action would not pass the so-called sniff test, it turns out Heydon's dignified, forensic, scholarly rebuttal of his accusers had both moral and legal weight in the community.

For all the brouhaha kicked in the media you would think Heydon's 67-page response to his critics' arguments would be the defining document in the coverage. Yet I looked in vain for a link to his decision. (For those interested in reading a former high court judge and professor of law dismantling a welter of innuendo and supposition, Heydon's decision is available at tradeunionroyalcommission.gov.au/.)

If the Australian Council of Trade Unions does not mount a legal challenge to this decision, it will prove Labor and the unions waged a fraudulent and opportunistic smear campaign against the royal commissioner.

First among those leading the attack is Shorten. After Heydon released his 25,000-word decision, Shorten said: "Everything the royal commission says may as well have a Liberal Party logo on it … Any recommendation out of this can't be taken seriously." There is a legal term for openly impugning the integrity of a royal commission, especially by someone who is a party to the inquiry: contempt.

On the question of contempt, Jason Clare, the shadow minister for communications, deserves special mention. In parliament, on August 13, he described Heydon as "a bagman". For a former minister of justice to use the safety of parliament to defame a high court judge shows just how low Labor is willing to go.

Now Shorten proposes to double down when federal parliament resumes on Monday. Labor has signalled it will move in the Senate to petition the Governor-General to remove Heydon as royal commissioner. I would have thought Shorten already had enough political, professional and personal baggage to stop flogging this now dangerous horse.