While the Trade Union Royal Commission has raised legitimate concerns about union governance, it's extraordinary how weak some of the evidence is and how willing the media is to ignore counter-narratives, writes Stephen Long.

Twenty one years ago Johnny Lomax - player of the year for the Canberra Raiders - was suspended by the rugby league judiciary for a high tackle and rubbed out of the 1994 grand final.

He suffered a better fate in the ACT Magistrates Court on Monday: it threw out absurd criminal charges the Australian Federal Police had pursued against Lomax on behalf of the Trade Union Royal Commission.

Lomax's "crime" was to seek better pay and conditions for workers under an enterprise agreement with their employer.

According to the police charge sheet, this amounted to making "an unwarranted demand with menace, namely that an enterprise agreement be signed between NEL Trading Pty Ld and the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union ... with the intention of causing a loss."

The "loss" alleged by police was that the company would have to pay its workers at least $26 an hour under the enterprise agreement, rather than the $17 the employer claimed it might otherwise pay (a wage which was, in fact, below the relevant award minimum).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-22/long-why-is-no-one-questioning-the-turc-narrative/6868102

Meanwhile Heydon should have dismissed himself for having been a right wing stooge even if he did not know it.

"The royal commission was always about prosecuting an ideological, partisan agenda," Mr Oliver told reporters.

He said it was "no coincidence" that the report had been released soon after the Productivity Commission had released its report recommending Sunday penalty rates for cafe, restaurant, entertainment and retail workers be lowered to the same level as Saturday penalty rates.

"It's a tale of two commissions: a Productivity Commission which has now handed down recommendations to attack wages and conditions of low-paid workers in this country," Mr Oliver said, "and at the same time you've had a royal commission that is about diminishing the capacity of unions ... to defend penalty rates."

He said the ACTU believed that $80 million had been spent on the royal commission - challenging the $46 million figure in Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon's final report, released on Wednesday. "That money could have been well spent anywhere else."

Mr Oliver said the ACTU had consistently said there was a "zero tolerance" approach to corruption in the union movement. "We took unprecedented action three years ago when we suspended the Health Services Union," he said.

And he said that, contrary to the finding by the royal commission of widespread and deep-seated corruption within unions, there was "no evidence of systemic corrupt unlawful conduct" in unions.

After 15 minutes spent stridently defending the union movement, Mr Oliver was challenged by reporters on the level of corruption within union ranks.

"There are a number of isolated cases that we find reprehensible," he said in reply. "Those individuals should face the full force of the law. But it is wrong to suggest there is a widespread systemic problem across the movement."